Julia Evans

Julia Evans

Julia Evans

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.

Latest Posts

Examples for the tcpdump and dig man pages

Julia Evans · 1mo

Hello! My big takeaway from last month’s musings about man pages was that examples in man pages are really great, so I worked on adding (or improving) examples to two of my...

Notes on clarifying man pages

Julia Evans · 2mo

Hello! After spending some time working on the Git man pages last year, I’ve been thinking a little more about what makes a good man page. I’ve spent a lot of time writing cheat...

Some notes on starting to use Django

Julia Evans · 3mo

Hello! One of my favourite things is starting to learn an Old Boring Technology that I’ve never tried before but that has been around for 20+ years. It feels really good when...

A data model for Git (and other docs updates)

Julia Evans · 3mo

Hello! This past fall, I decided to take some time to work on Git’s documentation. I’ve been thinking about working on open source docs for a long time – usually if I think the...

Notes on switching to Helix from vim

Julia Evans · 6mo

Hello! Earlier this summer I was talking to a friend about how much I love using fish, and how I love that I don’t have to configure it. They said that they feel the same way...

New zine: The Secret Rules of the Terminal

Julia Evans · 10mo

Hello! After many months of writing deep dive blog posts about the terminal, on Tuesday I released a new zine called “The Secret Rules of the Terminal”! You can get it for $12...

Using `make` to compile C programs (for non-C-programmers)

Julia Evans · 10mo

I have never been a C programmer but every so often I need to compile a C/C++ program from source. This has been kind of a struggle for me: for a long time, my approach was...

Standards for ANSI escape codes

Julia Evans · 13mo

Hello! Today I want to talk about ANSI escape codes. For a long time I was vaguely aware of ANSI escape codes (“that’s how you make text red in the terminal and stuff”) but I...

How to add a directory to your PATH

Julia Evans · 14mo

I was talking to a friend about how to add a directory to your PATH today. It’s something that feels “obvious” to me since I’ve been using the terminal for a long time, but when...

Some terminal frustrations

Julia Evans · 14mo

A few weeks ago I ran a terminal survey (you can read the results here) and at the end I asked: What’s the most frustrating thing about using the terminal for you? 1600 people...

What's involved in getting a "modern" terminal setup?

Julia Evans · 15mo

Hello! Recently I ran a terminal survey and I asked people what frustrated them. One person commented: There are so many pieces to having a modern terminal experience. I wish it...

"Rules" that terminal programs follow

Julia Evans · 16mo

Recently I’ve been thinking about how everything that happens in the terminal is some combination of: Your operating system’s job Your shell’s job Your terminal emulator’s job...

Why pipes sometimes get "stuck": buffering

Julia Evans · 16mo

Here’s a niche terminal problem that has bothered me for years but that I never really understood until a few weeks ago. Let’s say you’re running this command to watch for some...

Importing a frontend Javascript library without a build system

Julia Evans · 17mo

I like writing Javascript without a build system and for the millionth time yesterday I ran into a problem where I needed to figure out how to import a Javascript library in my...

New microblog with TILs

Julia Evans · 17mo

I added a new section to this site a couple weeks ago called TIL (“today I learned”). the goal: save interesting tools & facts I posted on social media One kind of thing I like...
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