Inventor. Investing @PWVentures. Formerly: GitHub cofounder. Board @HackClub @Ona_hq @MoteHydrogen. Also: Gravatar, Jekyll, SemVer, TOML, RedwoodJS.
United States
- Tweets 8,554
- Following 3,602
- Followers 59,295
- Likes 3,798
I don't have a CS degree...or any degree. Some of our best engineers at GitHub never even graduated high school. But also, some of them had a BS, masters, or PhD in CS. Amazing programmers come from all backgrounds. Using formal education as a hiring filter is nonsense.
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If I want to cancel your online service and you make me do it via email or a phone call, then regardless of how good my experience was with your product, that final experience ruins all the rest of it, and I am very unlikely to recommend it to others.
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Introducing RedwoodJS (redwoodjs.com), a new JS web framework I’ve been working on for the past year! Today we are releasing v0.1.0. We’re bringing full-stack to the JAMstack!
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Wow! This fusion of ChatGPT and a more traditional programming language (for more precise control) is blowing my mind right now. Infinite standard library with no code!
medium.com/javascript-scene/…
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That’s not what defunding the police means. It means shifting funding from what is currently the police to social worker and other programs that don’t roll up to every problem thinking that force and guns are the most likely solution. theguardian.com/us-news/2020…
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The Verge just announced changes to their "on background" policy. Founders, BE CAREFUL. Here are the top 5 things I've learned about talking to reporters from my time as CEO of GitHub.
A thread 👇
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Today is a day to celebrate every person that made @GitHub possible! Past/present GitHub employees: Thank you. 😍 There is no company without its people. YOU made GH succeed. Users: Thank you for believing in a better way to collaborate. DON'T STOP. BELIEVIN'! HOLD ON TO THIS FE
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Announcing Chatterbug, the new startup I've been working on for the last 18 months! The public beta is now open: chatterbug.com
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I turn 41 today, so I’m giving away 41 MacBook Air laptops (reverse 🎁)! 40 to @hackclub students, and one to a follower. To enter, follow me & reply with a tweet-sized poem about coding. Retweet to double your chance. On June 3, I’ll select ten random poems and my fave will win!
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I think it's because in technology, there are many paths to expertise. School is one. Work is another. Hacking on a crappy old laptop for years during high school instead of going to parties is yet another. Formal education is a positive signal, but should not be a filter.
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Big announcement: @RedwoodJS is going all in on React Server Components! 🌲⚛✅
The next Redwood epoch (Bighorn 🐏) will be all about RSC and the advantages it brings over the SPA approach we've had until now.
Want to know why? Read my new blog post:
tom.preston-werner.com/2023/…
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Buying GitHub stars is morally bankrupt.
I love that GitHub continues to be one of the most authentic "social networks" we have. Every year it feels more like the grifter economy is taking over everything, and it sucks.
I hate that you can buy GitHub stars now. It makes it super hard for developers to understand what other people are using and care about.
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If you find yourself compelled to bake bread, start a podcast, run an online conference, learn an instrument, start an open source project, or any other creative endeavor during this period of isolation...DO IT! Ignore the haters and do what excites you.
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Donald Trump’s normalization of unashamed, constant, *significant* lying during this election is extremely dangerous to American politics.
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Do you ever worry about whether using a semicolon in an email or text message, while grammatically correct, would make you seem fussy and pretentious (vs. using a plain old comma)? Asking for a friend.
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I'm super happy to announce that along with today's @RedwoodJS 1.0 release, I will be providing $1M of funding towards future development of the framework over the next year! 🌲💵🚀
Read more about it on my new blog post: tom.preston-werner.com/2022/…
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Holy smokes, after almost 8 years, the TOML spec is finally 1.0!!!!!!!!!!!!
Plus a fancy new website: toml.io/
Huge shout out to @pradyunsg and the many contributors that have helped TOML reach this point, you have been amazing stewards of the project; thank you!
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Excited to announce that I have led @Gitpod's $25M Series A, and have joined their board!
gitpod.io/blog/future-of-sof…
I believe that Cloud Development Environments (CDEs) will unlock a new era of productivity and joy for developers on the same scale that GitHub did. 🧵
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Tempted to fly to St. Louis just to eat the Impossible Whopper. The meatless revolution is happening! nytimes.com/2019/04/01/techn…
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Farewell GitHub, Hello Immersive Computing - tom.preston-werner.com/2014/…
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Today’s my 45th birthday, so it's time for my annual reverse birthday present! 🎁
This year I’m donating $45k to Hack Club to help 45 teenagers get on The Boreal Express (boreal.hackclub.com), an epic, cross-continent hackathon on a train this summer, organized by Hack Club.
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GitHub would have been impossible without Git. Thank you to @Linus__Torvalds, @jch2355, github.com/peff, and every person that appears on github.com/git/git/graphs/co…. Easy branching & merging made me love Git, and it changed open source forever.
👏💻💾🌐💾💻💯
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If you need to hire that many people then you also can commit the resources to read cover letters, look at portfolio pages, scan open source contributions, and most importantly, actually talk to people. It's not easy, but it is the right thing to do.
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Want to make animated GIF screencasts on Mac/Windows super easily? This app changed my life: cockos.com/licecap/
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Finally updated my avatar! I used the same one from the early GitHub years (taken at GH office 2.0) for about 13 years. Turns out I have more wrinkles now. =)
Thanks to Norman Posselt who took the photo at #thisnextthing conf in Switzerland!
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I'm turning 43 years old today, and as tradition has foretold, it's time for a reverse birthday present! 🎂
This year I'm giving ✨430✨ new handheld game console kits to @HackClub teenagers. Each includes a custom Hack Club PCB, buttons, screen, microprocessor, & more. 🧵👇🏼
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Holy smokes, it's my 42nd birthday today, so it's time for a reverse birthday present! Ready?
🎁This year I'm giving 42 teenagers from @HackClub the adventure of a lifetime.🎁
Is that cryptic? Indeed, part of the mystery.😉More will be revealed tomorrow, but here's a clue:💻💨
ALT A birthday present wrapped with bright pink ribbon.
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Today's big @RedwoodJS announcement is...
🌲The Redwood Startup Fund🌲
A $1M fund that will invest $25k–$50k in startups that use RedwoodJS as a primary component of their stack.
Read more about it on my blog!
tom.preston-werner.com/2022/…
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Dear Apple, I would pay almost any amount of money for an updated (e.g. fast) MacBook Air with Retina screen. Keep the keyboard/ports/magsafe the same (maybe add one USB-C). I still use my 2013 MacBook Air (away from home) because every new Apple laptop is a disaster.
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So happy we chose @Prisma Client & Migrate for @RedwoodJS. Finally we have something akin to Rails' ActiveRecord but for JavaScript & the future of JAMstack apps!
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Still no Apple laptops that are appealing to me. Still rocking my 2014 Macbook Air. What is going on? How are they tripling down on such a terrible keyboard? Why don't they think useful ports are useful? Why are they living in CRAZYLAND?
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Now that we're all-in on social distancing, I think I'm gonna try "beer conferencing" where it's just a Zoom call, but you all grab beers and just hang out online in the evening.
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This morning, @tpdubs2 and I donated $1M toward COVID-19 response in San Francisco, focused on medical workers, childcare, and food security for the vulnerable. $250k each to UCSF, SF General, YMCA, and the city’s emergency food program. Details at tom.preston-werner.com/2020/…
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GitHub trivia time: Did you know that GitHub was originally incorporated as Logical Awesome LLC? Site is still up. :)
logicalawesome.com
We renamed the company to GitHub Inc when we converted to a C Corp.
#mycodesareperfect
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NASA + open source on GitHub. Amazeballs. code.nasa.gov/
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Spent the last month working on this: How we turn $199 Chromebooks into Ubuntu-based code learning machines for kids! blog.codestarter.org/post/93…
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When I was interviewed on Live TV by Fox News after the big GitHub Series A, they got the investor wrong, spelled "repository" wrong, did abominal things to em dashes, mis-capitalized GitHub, and called pull requests "e-notes". QED.
ALT Screenshot of Fox News segment I was in. Ridiculous parts are mentioned in the tweet.
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Prediction: within 5 years, you’ll build your next large scale, fully featured web app with #JAMstack and deploy on @Netlify.
How to build serverless CRUD apps with @Netlify functions & @faunadb
Read about it here 👉
netlify.com/blog/2018/07/09/…
Or try the 1-click deploy ⚡️
app.netlify.com/start/deploy…
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Self-documenting code is a myth. Code only communicates action, not intent. Nor does it communicate assumptions about input constraints.
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📢 Big announcement! 📢
React Server Components are now supported in the latest canaries of @RedwoodJS! 🌲
We’ve put together a walkthrough of our RSC support so far, and how we make data fetching insanely easy with Redwood’s Server Cells:
redwoodjs.com/blog/rsc-now-i…
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1) Always mute except to talk (with > 3 people). 2) Mandatory headphones (echo is the video conf killer). 3) Someone is the call leader and keeps things moving and calls on those that are less likely to voice their opinion spontaneously. 4) Upgrade your Internet. 5) Be on time.
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An ongoing catalog of videos of police violence is being put together on GitHub by 100s of volunteers. Help if you can! github.com/2020PB/police-bru…
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Think Like (a) Git: think-like-a-git.net - Pretty awesome.
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Rule of thumb when reading the news (or social media): if a story makes you angry or upset, that’s by design. Recognize that they are playing you, and dig deeper into both sides to find the real story. Almost always you will find context that was hidden by the author.
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Yes! And I'm working on "React for Rails". It's called the Hammer Framework. github.com/hammerframework/h… Still very early, but this is happening. Want to help?
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Introducing TOML. Never use YAML again. Yep, I went there. github.com/mojombo/toml
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🎂 Today's my 44th birthday, so it's time for my traditional reverse birthday present! 🎂
I've been having tons of fun doing an electronics side project, so I thought it would be cool to give the same opportunity to 440 @HackClub students via OnBoard: github.com/hackclub/onboard
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NodeJS running natively IN THE BROWSER WHAAAAAAAAAT!?
@StackBlitz has just opened a giant door to the adjacent possible and I am so thrilled to be an investor. Check this whole thread for videos of it in action!
Today we’re excited to bring Node.js back to its roots - the browser!
Together with @googlechrome and @vercel, we're enabling a new type of development and debugging experience that was not possible before: 🧵
blog.stackblitz.com/posts/in…
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I just found out that white button mushrooms, cremini (brown) mushrooms, and portobello mushrooms are THE SAME MUSHROOM at diff ages. Whoa.
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I remember back in very early GitHub days we had to choose between Textile and Markdown for formatting text entry, and it was very much not a decided thing back then.
We liked Markdown better and put a lot of effort into making it work in the GitHub context (GitHub Flavored Markdown), plus adding emoji support (type colon and get auto-complete on emoji names) extremely early too.
We also made a controversial decision to add filename extension support to the Readme file (e.g. Readme.md, Readme.txt, etc) so we could properly format your Readme file. Before that, the standard was a bare "README" file and no expectation on formatting whatsoever. Now almost every Readme has a filetype extension. In fact, of the 25 currently trending GitHub repos, 24/25 have a "Readme.md" file (and one has no Readme at all).
Having the industry mostly standardize on Markdown has been a big productivity boost enhancer!
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To the mooooooon! 🌝
But seriously, thanks @elonmusk, this gift is going to help bring the @HackClub awesomeness to so many more highschoolers. 🚀👩💻🚀
We are so excited to share that @elonmusk has donated $1 million to Hack Club. 🚀💖
This gift will make so much more possible for Hack Clubbers. Learn about we're going to use it: hackclub.com/relon
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This is huge for open source projects! github.com/blog/2247-improvi…
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Wow, thanks, Max! We are quickly approaching a public release and will start talking about Redwood a lot more in the next few months. It's been more than a year in the making. Give it a star and/or watch on GitHub if you want to follow along!
Redwood (formerly Hammer) is the most exciting development in the Node.js space at the moment: github.com/redwoodjs/redwood
I can't wait for it to be ready! 😍
👏 @mojombo @appfactory
ALT Redwood is an opinionated, full stack, serverless web application framework that will allow you to build JAMstack applications with ease. By making a lot of decisions for you, Redwood lets you get to work on what makes your application special, instead of wasting cycles choosing and re-choosing various technology components.
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Tempted to learn yet another programming language? STOP. Study up on design and UX instead. Much bigger step change in capability.
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Awesome post on URL design by @kneath: http://warpspire.com/posts/url-design/
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Open source Nest thermostat clone, built in a day, hosted on GitHub? Kick. Ass. github.com/spark/thermostat
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New blog post: Joining the Netlify Board to Help Shape the Future of the JAMstack - tom.preston-werner.com/2020/…
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Really excellent thoughts on GraphQL API design from the @Shopify folks: github.com/Shopify/graphql-d…
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The 🌲Redwood Startup Fund🌲 is now accepting applications!
If you're using @RedwoodJS as a primary component in your startup's stack and looking for a $25k-$50k investment, this is for you! Prioritizing for diverse founder backgrounds and climate tech.
redwoodstartupfund.com/
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How many books would you read this year if you replaced all your time on Facebook with time reading ACTUAL books?
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The riots in Minneapolis are a natural consequence of the systemic racism and oppression that Blacks in the US have to endure. Our police system is broken. Our educational system is broken. Our economy is broken. Our government is broken. #BlackLivesMatter
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I've just become a $50/mo sponsor of @thesegunadebayo's Chakra UI—a really nice React component library that's properly open source (MIT). chakra-ui.com/ You should check it out!
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I’m learning how to be a Dungeon Master so I can lead D&D campaigns for my 8 year old son and his friends. This is complicated! Any tips so I don’t blow it?
ALT Cover of D&D Essentials Kit box.
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Every time I cross the street in front of a self driving car (not infrequent in SF) I feel a great compulsion to do something weird and unpredictable in order to gift it better training data.
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I voted like my children’s and grandchildren’s lives depend on it. Because they do. Now is our chance; please vote! #ClimateVoter #BidenHarris2020
ALT Me, smiling with my “I Voted!” sticker on. Let’s do this!
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I’m excited to be an investor in @Fauna’s latest round!
We need a distributed serverless DB for the future of webapps (e.g. those made with @RedwoodJS) and Fauna is making it happen.
Looking forward to @Prisma support for it, too. :)
Fauna raises $27M and welcomes former Okta and Snowflake executives @ericberg and @Bob_Muglia join Fauna as CEO and Chairman of the Board. fauna.com/blog/funding-to-sc…
#Serverless #Jamstack #Javascript #GraphQL #FaunaDB
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Holy crap, 3D interactive maps of San Francisco and a few other cities. Kinda just blew my mind. http://maps.ovi.com/3D
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Oooooh things are heating up over here!
I’m really thrilled to be a part of the @Netlify journey as a board member and investor. It’s rad to have a front seat on the drive to the future of the web. 🤩
Netlify snags $105M Series D to fuel Jamstack-focused web development tcrn.ch/3wTxAwC by @ron_miller
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Every minute you spend on Twitter is a minute you could be using to build that web app idea you've had for ages.
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Yes, this is advice to myself as well.
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Even if we were to fully defund the police (which may be the best avenue), we would replace it with alternative programs that do a better job, one of which would be a much smaller and properly trained group authorized to use force in those rare cases that need it.
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JS/TS tooling can and will be much more awesome in the future, and Rome is on the forefront of making it happen.
I'm pleased to be a seed round investor and do whatever I can to help turn their vision into a reality!
Announcing Rome Tools Inc, an open source first company for @rometools rome.tools/blog/announcing-r…
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Wow, this is a big deal! Further demonstrates that Microsoft is truly interested in GitHub being their showcase of developer love.
Today(!) we’re thrilled to announce unlimited free private repos for all GitHub users, and a new simplified Enterprise offering: blog.github.com/2019-01-07-n…
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Major version numbers are not sacred.
tom.preston-werner.com/2022/…
a.k.a Why we're shipping @RedwoodJS 2.0 less than two months after releasing 1.0.
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It’s incredibly foolish to judge people until you have a good grasp of both sides of the story.
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Open source is the coolest.
@RedwoodJS was born during the pandemic and now I have a whole new friend group because of it!
Congrats, team!!!!
⭐️I spy with my little eye....10k GitHub stars!⭐️
We are amazed at the community that has grown up around our little web framework. 🌲 We got here because of your contributions, bug reports, and excitement!
Thank you! 🙏
Now, go build that startup; we'll see you at 20k! 🤩
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Nothing says parenting quite like using your cupped hands as a bowl to catch your 3 year old's barf in the middle of the night.
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Serve and protect, huh? What a farce. There is an absolute failure of leadership and values in almost every police department.
Protests started in Erie.. a girl here was peacefully protesting, after 15 minutes she was maced and kicked.. #PoliceBrutality
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"main" is a better name than "master" for the default branch of a Git repo (plus starts with same 2 letters). We're making the change with @RedwoodJS and I'm hoping it soon becomes the standard for all new Git repos!
Starting today (🎉Juneteenth) we will use "main" instead of "master" as the default branch on our core repositories. This is a small step in a more comprehensive strategy we're putting together to build an inclusive and diverse community. Read more at community.redwoodjs.com/t/tr…
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Remember, if you intend to open source a library but don't add a license, it's actually copyrighted and can't be used without permission.
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In my mind, docs are PART OF the software, and a piece of software cannot truly be great unless it has great docs.
Huge shoutout to the @redwoodjs team for their excellent docs. The quality is outstanding and they have just the right about of breadth and depth 🎉
I'm especially fond of the tutorials. I refer back to them all the time 💯
learn.redwoodjs.com/docs/tut…
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Must see video presentation by @rtomayko on our distributed management style at GitHub: redmonk.com/tv/2012/10/24/di…
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Oh man, I totally forgot about this video! This is totally what I'm like when I get my code working.
Thrilled to see that my @redwoodjs authentication provider, @meet_magic got merged! #passwordless authentication is magical 🎩✨
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My @RedwoodJS talk from @ReactSummit is up!
I promise you won't be bored, and it's the perfect way to get a taste for how Redwood seamlessly integrates all the tech you need to build and deploy a modern full-stack React app.
In @mojombo's talk, you'll learn about the @RedwoodJS architecture, see core features in action, and walk away with a sense of wonder and awe in your heart: piped.video/J21zOUhHjl4
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A few weeks ago I was the first guest speaker for the @HackClub AMA series. Now they’re having @ElonMusk as a guest on Friday! The lineup afterwards is awesome too. Providing high school students this kind of access to tech leaders is transformative. Love it!!!
We’re excited to announce that @ElonMusk is doing an AMA this Friday at 1pm PT / 4pm ET with Hack Club students! 🚀🛰☀️🚘🧠🕳
Follow us at @hackclub we'll post a link to the livestream 20 min before the AMA starts so you can tune in!
ALT Hack Club AMA Elon Musk April 24, 2020 1pm PT / 4pm ET @ hackclub.com
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Thrilled to see Google open source the Roboto font! Did you know GitHub once had a UFO font format glyph viewer? github.com/google/roboto
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The @RedwoodJS booth at React Conf 2024 was on another level thanks to @cannikin’s hard work hand crafting it over the last few weeks!
And yes, the logo is made from actual redwood. :)
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Redwood is React + GraphQL + Prisma2 + Babel + webpack + CDN + Functions + DB (+ Jest, Storybook, & others soon). I see so much untapped potential in this mix of technologies. Let’s unlock it together! Follow @redwoodjs for updates.
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All aboard! This summer, @HackClub is taking 42 teenagers on a train trip hackathon across America, from HackClub HQ in Vermont to SpaceX in LA.
I'm donating those 42 train tickets (happy reverse birthday!) and I'll be on the train from Iowa to SF!
zephyr.hackclub.com/
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AI is cool and all, but what I really want is for my iPhone to do a simple substring match to detect when I’m typing my email address and offer autocompletion every time.
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Google Code shutting down, suggesting repos move to GitHub. Amazing what a side project can become. google-opensource.blogspot.c…
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