Greg Wilson
third-bit.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2007
Greg Wilson is a software engineering educator and author who writes on teaching programming, software design, and evidence in software engineering.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend his books, including Software Design by Example and The Architecture of Open Source Applications, as excellent references.
72HN people shared it
19linked it in comments
63stories submitted
400story points
3 months agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
- 1Twelve Ways to Be Wrong About AI-Assisted Coding8 people · 10 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 2Software Design by Example5 people · 5 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 3Sdxjs4 people · first shared 2023
- 4Software Engineering's Greatest Hits3 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 5Homepage3 people · first shared 2018
- 6Cathedrals, Bazaars, and in Between2 people · 67 points · first shared 2015 · 16 comments on HN
- 7Thinking Like a Programmer (2018)2 people · 60 points · first shared 2020 · 4 comments on HN
- 8An Exchange with DataCamp2 people · 5 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 9I Want a Memory Diagram Generator2 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 10Gleam for Python Programmers2 people · 3 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 11A Better Software Engineering Course2 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 12Software Design by Example: Introduction2 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 13Software Engineering's Greatest Hits2 people · 1 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 14Archives 45292 people · first shared 2012
- 15Teaching2 people · first shared 2018
What HN people wrote when they linked it
closed · 2018-03-01
I build tools for teaching data science at DataCamp, so am really interested in this question! I think so, and suspect the ways in which a good language tutor assesses / recognizes where students can improve will have direct parallels for coding.
Greg Wilson (who founded Software Carpentry) has a great collection of thoughts on learning to program in general: http://third-bit.com/
rgovostes · 2024-02-07
This is from Greg Wilson (https://third-bit.com), co-editor of "The Architecture of Open Source Applications" and many other superb references.
Edit: He wrote about this project here: https://third-bit.com/2024/02/03/sql-tutorial/
_diyar · 2024-02-07
As mentioned by others, the author Dr. Greg Wilson has written/compiled many books/tutorials which I can recommend. I would especially laud Software Design by Example [1][2], The Architecture of Open Source Applications [3] and Teaching Tech Together [4].
[1] https://third-bit.com/sdxpy/ (python version) [2] https://third-bit.com/sdxjs/ (js version) [3] https://aosabook.org/ [4] http://teachtogether.tech/
dinkleberg · 2023-08-24
This looks excellent, thanks for sharing.
It also links off to this which looks like a good read https://third-bit.com/sdxjs/
ta238911 · 2022-09-10
A great recap of some papers: Software engineering's greatest hits.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrVtA-ue-x0
* slides: https://third-bit.com/talks/greatest-hits/#1
fbr · 2021-08-14
Link to the slides: https://third-bit.com/talks/greatest-hits/
qznc · 2021-07-20
Greg Wilson is more positive. Though he does agree that nobody cares.
https://third-bit.com/2021/07/17/software-engineerings-greatest-hits/
spenrose · 2019-06-10
The Software/Data Carpentries focus intensely on these matters, and their founder Greg Wilson continues to work on them:
https://carpentries.org
http://third-bit.com
fragmede · 2026-07-13
Can you be more specific? I didn't see anything on eg https://third-bit.com/gl4py/basics/ that was political.
vismit2000 · 2026-06-05
Querynomicon - An Introduction to SQL for the Cautious and Weary: https://third-bit.com/sql/
lporto · 2023-07-26
See also:
Software Design by Example:
a tool-based introduction with JavaScript
https://third-bit.com/sdxjs/
tsm · 2023-01-17
Software Design by Example (https://www.routledge.com/Software-Design-by-Example-A-Tool-Based-Intr…
Available free online at https://third-bit.com/sdxjs/
muench · 2021-02-03
Greg Wilson writes about a useful tool for thinking about types of documentation [0] incorporating the novice-competent practitioner-expert framework.
It looks like he was at least partly inspired by this article [1].
[0] https://third-bit.com/2019/08/08/documentation-types/
[1] https://third-bit.com/2018/10/18/four-forms-of-docs/
Jugurtha · 2020-09-21
Greg Wilson has a couple of books on this:
- "How to Teach Programming (And Other Things)"[0]
- "Teaching Tech Together", newer edition of aforementioned book.[1]
These books delve into how to conduct lessons, what to concentrate on, what to optimize for, how to construct quizz questions with embedded diagnostic capability so you not only see who gets it wrong or right, but on which concept/part they get it wrong.
There is another book "How Learning Works" by Ambrose et al.[2]
[0]: https://third-bit.com/2017/05/31/how-to-teach-programming.html
[1]: http://teachtogether.tech/ [there are two versions, English and Spanish]
[2]: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/How+Learning+Works%3A+Seven+Research+Based…
minimaxir · 2019-04-21
Other DataCamp employees did "sit down like adults" and talk about it.
https://dhavide.github.io/a-note-to-our-commuity-on-building-trust.htm…
http://third-bit.com/2019/04/15/an-exchange-with-datacamp.html
They got fired because of it.
a_bonobo · 2018-05-21
If anyone is interested in the scientific literature on learning, Greg Wilson has been writing a book based on Software Carpentry materials on how to teach programming, which cites a lot of the scientific literature, it's free here: http://third-bit.com/teaching/
dalke · 2015-01-06
This essay has been pretty popular over the last year, as one can see from https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%09The+tyranny+of+structureless#!/story/sort… . It's definitely influenced my thinking on the topic.
I'll me a guess that the submitter saw it mentioned in http://third-bit.com/2015/01/05/cathedrals-bazaars-and-in-between.html , which was linked to from HN about 11 hours ago, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8839338 .
stonemetal · 2012-12-10
Except that it hasn't been shown to work better. Quoting from http://third-bit.com/blog/archives/4529.html: "If you ask its advocates for evidence, they’ll tell you why it has to be true; if you press them, you’ll be given anecdotes, and if you press harder, people will be either puzzled or hostile."
Oh good, evidence against is just as preachy and unscientific as the evidence for.
http://evidencebasedse.com/?q=taxonomy/term/2
Research suggests that unit testing has a very strong correlation with correct software. Research suggests TDD has no correlation with correct software, except for the fact that TDDers tend to write 2x more tests than non TDDers.
sn9 · 2025-12-13
Software Design by Example sounds like what you want [0].
There's also NAND to Tetris [1], csprimer [2], and/or lists like these [3] or codecrafters [4].
[0] https://third-bit.com/sdxpy/
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-second-Principles-dp…
[2] https://csprimer.com/courses/
[3] https://www.andreinc.net/2024/03/28/programming-projects-ideas
[4] https://app.codecrafters.io/catalog