#6 Special Guest Jeff Atwood, Part 1: Jeff and Steve on Effective Software Development Process

**Mark Griffin** (0:03)
Hello again, this is Mark Griffin, the Director of Customer Solutions here at Construx, a team of software engineering experts led by legendary author Steve McConnell. Here we believe every software team can be more successful delivering higher levels of business value. Today, we're departing from the normal bit and happy to share the first of two episodes featuring a very special guest, Jeff Atwood. Jeff is a software developer, author, and entrepreneur known for many things, including his Coding Horror blog, co-founding the computing programming question and answer website Stack Overflow, and is currently developing Discourse, a powerful open source discussion platform.
Over the holidays, we recorded Jeff and Steve McConnell discussing Steve's new book, More Effective Agile, which Jeff had just read. Steve and Jeff have known each other for a long time since Jeff reached out regarding using Coding Horror as the name of his blog.
Many of our stooped listeners will remember that Coding Horror was the title of a repeated sidebar in Steve's book, Code Complete. Well, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. Let's let Steve tell that story. Enjoy.

**Steve McConnell** (1:04)
So I remember getting a contact from Jeff, and it was funny to me because the Coding Horror sidebar was actually one of my favorite parts of the book too. And so I thought it was pretty cool that somebody had zeroed in on that part that I liked so much. The one thing I didn't like about it was that in the draft version of the book, the manuscript, I had a version of the Coding Horror icon that I really liked. And then when the book came out with the final art, I actually didn't like the marginal art they had for that as much as I liked the art in the draft. So it's kind of funny to me when I look at your blog and I see that published version of the Coding Horror icon, I like the idea, but I'm always like, oh, I kind of liked my original version of that draft art better.
So obviously the blog and the idea of Coding Horror has resonated because it's been a super popular blog. I mean, that blog has been about as popular as the book, if not more so.

**Jeff Atwood** (1:58)
Yeah. Well, that's quite a compliment. I mean, to me, that was just such a groundbreaking book. And the way it concentrated on, you know, sort of the way you treat each other in your work environment and the way you approach the work, it was a very thoughtful sort of introspective way to look at it and very holistic and rang very true to me. So, yeah, I kind of wanted to riff on that with the blog, right? Like, what are the deeper ways that you improve yourself as a programmer, that how do you improve yourself as a person even, you know?
And I thought those were really powerful, resonant concepts.
And yeah.

**Steve McConnell** (2:38)
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think that topic is evergreen. I think just in the last month or so, I've had extended conversations with people about really revisiting the basic topic of what really makes for a professional programmer, how do you improve, you know, are really good programmers born or made? You know, if you start out as a mediocre programmer, is it possible to become a really good programmer or do you have to be born that way? I mean, these are interesting topics still, I think.

**Jeff Atwood** (3:08)
Yeah, absolutely. And one thing I do want to mention is, you gave me a copy of your new book, More Effective Agile.
And it really struck me, going through that book, how software development has changed, the way we approach it has changed. And I was curious, like, what your thoughts are having written, you know, books. I mean, what year was your earliest book?

**Steve McConnell** (3:30)
Code Complete, yeah, that was the first one. That was the first thing I ever wrote was a 900-page book.

**Jeff Atwood** (3:39)
Even from Code Complete, like, the way we approach software development has kind of been changing. And I think for the better.
So I was curious what your take was. Do you feel like it's been like a radical change? Do you think things are completely different than they were, say, in the mid-'80s? This is the 90s?

**Steve McConnell** (3:58)
I think it has been a pretty radical change, all things considered. And, you know, it's been gradual. It hasn't been like anything happened overnight, all of a sudden everything was massively different. But I do think it's been a steady accumulation of improvements over time. And, you know, I think some of the issues that I talked about in the first edition of Code Complete just basically don't exist anymore. I think really crude programming environments. I mean, everybody's got things they like and don't like about their environment. But, you know, in the first edition of the book, I had a vision for essentially an IDE. And by the time the second edition came around, I didn't need it anymore because the vision had essentially been realized in commercial products. And, you know, so the tool support is better.