Scripting News: Twitter for coding communities

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Twitter for coding communities

A few days ago I wrote that Twitter is a very nice low-tech notification system. I had an application in mind, and put a first step on my to-do list.

I started a new channel called dwcodeupdates. The content in this channel will be of interest to at most 10 people, geekish users of the OPML Editor, but the concept should be interesting to members of coding communities.

I added a hook in my code check-in system. It already had a provision for me to add a comment to each partial release, derived from the outline at the head of every script that maintains a reverse chronology of the changes to the part. In a sense every bit of code is a weblog. I've been doing it this way since the early 90s. Here's a screen shot of a bit of code I started yesterday. And one that was started in 1998.

As I release a change, the system posts a note to the Twitter channel. You can subscribe to if, if you care. Like everything with Twitter, no big deal if you miss something, but it does give you an idea of what I'm doing right now, in a different dimension.

As usual, what's important are the people.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:46 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Apr Jun