About this blog

This blog is about

• being delighted about programming
• showing how topics traditionally considered “hard” and “scary” are actually accessible and interesting and fun (TCP! / Kernel hacking! / Traceroute! / gzip! / databases! / SSL!)
• asking questions and getting better every day.
• how being clear & curious & humble is better than sounding like I know it all already
• experimenting with alternative ways to teach hard concepts (zines!)

About me

I’m a software developer. I live in Montreal. I sometimes give talks. Most of my income comes from my programming zines business Wizard Zines.

I have one main opinion about programming, which is that deeply understanding the underlying systems you use (the browser, the kernel, the operating system, the network layers, your database, HTTP, whatever you’re running on top of) is essential if you want to do technically innovative work and be able to solve hard problems.

I spent the fall of 2013 at the Recurse Center, which houses my favourite programming community. I wrote down what I did every day while there, if you want to know what it’s like.