The Third Bit

In Brief

Co-founder and first Executive Director of Software Carpentry
Co-founder of It Will Never Work in Theory and The Architecture of Open Source Applications
ACM SIGSOFT Influential Educator of the Year
Co-winner, Jolt Award, Best General Book
Member, Python Software Foundation
Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh
Author or editor of over a dozen books on programming and two for children

…more

Projects

Software Design by Example: A Tool-Based Introduction with JavaScript is now available for purchase. All royalties from book sales will go to support the Red Door Family Shelter in Toronto; you can read the book online or give feedback on GitHub.

Software Design by Example is the book I'll recommend to every new dev… It is nice to you. It wants you to succeed… It's a bridge from "learn to program" to working programmer.
Jessica Kerr
I am v much enjoying gvwilson's book Software Design by Example. It makes me miss teaching, it would be such a fun text to use!
Jenn Schiffer

A Python edition of this book is currently being developed.
If you would like an early look, please get in touch.

Research Software Engineering with Python

A textbook on building research software and running research software projects (2021).

JavaScript for Data Science

An introduction to JavaScript and web programming for data scientists (2020).

Teaching Tech Together

An introduction to evidence-based teaching for people with technical backgrounds (2019, slides).

It Will Never Work in Theory

Brief reviews for working programmers of empirical results in software engineering (2011–present).

The Architecture of Open Source Applications

A collection of essays describing the architectures of fifty open source projects (2011–12).

The Carpentries

A non-profit organization teaching basic software and data skills to researchers world-wide (1998–present).

Recent Posts

DateTitle
2023-03-12Building a Book
2023-03-12Rethinking Design Examples
2023-03-11Full of Stars
2023-03-04The Only Features I Need
2023-03-04How Long Does It Take Me?
2023-02-26Provenance Revisited
2023-02-23It Will Never Work in Theory: April 2023 Lightning Talks
2023-02-21Coffee and Tea

read them all or follow me on Mastodon

Recent Papers

Author(s)YearTitle
Wilson2022Twelve quick tips for software design
Smalls & Wilson2021Ten quick tips for staying safe online
Lin et al2020Ten quick tips for making things findable
Nederbragt et al2020Ten quick tips for teaching with participatory live coding
Denny et al2019Research this! Questions that computing educators most want computing education researchers to answer
Sholler et al2019Ten simple rules for helping newcomers become contributors to open projects
Wilson2019Ten quick tips for creating an effective lesson
Brown & Wilson2019Ten quick tips for teaching programming

all publications

In the wake of posts about Shopify's support for white nationalists and DataCamp's attempts to cover up sexual harassment
I have had to disable comments on this site. Please email me if you'd like to get in touch.