/Julia Evans

Write Good Examples By Starting With Real Code tl;dr: Start with real code that you wrote and then "remove irrelevant details to make it into a self-contained example, instead of coming up with examples out of thin air." Julia runs through two types of examples - (1) realistic examples that sell the concept and (2) surprising examples that change someone's mental model.

featured in #236


Reasons Why Bugs Might Feel "Impossible" tl;dr: Julia outlines 5 reasons why bugs might feel impossible to solve, each of which is explained in detail: (1) The bug is hard to reproduce. (2) You don’t understand the overall system well. (3) It’s hard to get data about the bug. (4) One of your assumptions is wrong. (5) The bug is really complex.

featured in #233


Things Your Manager Might Not Know tl;dr: Julia outlines things your manager may not know and how to "manage them up", including what’s slowing the team down, what individual people on the team are working on, where the technical debt is, and more.

featured in #226


What To Talk About In 1-1s tl;dr: You should talk about what's going well, what's not going well, team priorities, and 3 other things sketched out for you in this post.

featured in #203


Some CSS Comics tl;dr: "I’ve been writing some comics about CSS this past week, and I thought as an experiment I’d post them to my blog instead of only putting them on Twitter."

featured in #198


When Your Coworker Does Great Work, Tell Their Manager tl;dr: Ask if it's ok first - since there are scenarios it may be counterproductive. Think about when it's important, how to do it, and other guidance.

featured in #193


Tell Candidates What To Expect From Your Job Interviews tl;dr: Given candidates won't know your interview process from the start - which can lead to confusion - share a simple document beforehand outlining the process and how they should prepare. Julia provides Stripe's sample document.

featured in #190


A Little Bit Of Plain Javascript Can Do A Lot tl;dr: Julia's goal is "to be able to write little websites with less than 200 lines of Javascript that mostly work." She runs through what all she's been able to do playing around with simple JS and without using a framework.

featured in #187


So You Want To Be A Wizard tl;dr: Beautifully designed zine: "here's how I approach learning hard things and getting better at programming."

featured in #180


When Debugging, Your Attitude Matters tl;dr: Julia started to believe that it was impossible to understand basic CSS concepts, impeding her own ability to learn. After shifting her attitude, she saw a major difference in her ability to learn.

featured in #179