Refactoring English

In software development, we collect anti-patterns to recognize common traits that lead to poor outcomes in our software.

The first time I saw Michelangelo’s David in person, I wept.

A good design doc can save you years of development time.

I created three design docs for the same open-source web app: I spent 16 hours writing one of the design docs completely by hand.

I’ve worked as a developer for 20 years, and I’ve always cared about clear writing.

With 2025 wrapped up, I can finally answer a question I’m curious about every year: who were the most popular bloggers of Hacker News?

One of my favorite programming books is Crafting Interpreters by Bob Nystrom.

You’ve spent weeks carefully writing a design document for your software project, but what happens next?

I started reading software blogs before I got my first programming job 20 years ago.

Adam Gordon Bell is a developer, blogger, and the host of the software engineering podcast, CoRecursive.

For the past eight months, I’ve been working on my book, Refactoring English: Effective Writing for Software Developers.

For software developers, there’s tremendous value in writing effective emails.

A release announcement showcases how the user’s experience is better today than it was yesterday.

I recently spoke to a developer who tried blogging but gave up because nobody was reading his posts.

Effective commit messages simplify the code review process and aid long-term code maintenance.

Your high school English teachers probably warned you that passive voice is dangerous and forbidden.

This exercise tests your ability to recognize the passive voice in the context of developing software.

This exercise tests your ability to recognize the passive voice in the context of developing software.

Most software tutorials are tragically flawed.