The Curious Engineer

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Ben Balter

ben.balter.com

I'm Ben Balter, and I write here about developer platforms, product and engineering leadership, open source, and showing your work.

Engineering management / careersDev tools / editors / IDEs

’10’15’20’25
Posts
197 from 12 Sep 2010 to 29 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (15 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://ben.balter.com/feed.xml

2026 15

  1. The rule of no surprises
  2. Your documentation quality is your AI quality now
  3. It's pronounced JIF. The Open and Async audiobook is out.
  4. Accessible by default: writing a book like software
  5. How I over-engineered my book
  6. Open and async on the Overcommitted podcast
  7. Open and Async: the remote-work playbook is out
  8. Work loudly
  9. Reorgs happen
  10. AI-first program management
  11. The brag doc
  12. How to one-on-one
  13. No agenda, no meeting
  14. Agentic workflows and the future of code
  15. Thirteen years remote at GitHub: what works

2025 1

  1. How to run LanguageTool on macOS

2024 1

  1. Silencing dissent isn't crisis management

2023 10

  1. Cathedral vs Bazaar People Management
  2. How to communicate like a GitHub engineer
  3. Transparent collaboration is the andon of knowledge work
  4. Remote work requires communicating more, less frequently
  5. Pull requests are a form of documentation
  6. Practice inclusive scheduling
  7. Meetings are a point of escalation, not a starting point
  8. GitHub for non-developers: a beginner's guide
  9. How to write a great extended leave document
  10. Manage like an engineer

2022 4

  1. Helpful 404s for Jekyll (and GitHub Pages)
  2. Why you should work asynchronously
  3. The seven things a corporate Chief of Staff does
  4. Leaders show their work

2021 9

  1. Using GitHub Actions to get notified when an API response (or web page) changes
  2. How I re-over-engineered my home network for privacy and security
  3. Moderating open source conversations to keep them productive
  4. Advice for managing open source communities at scale
  5. Open source governance
  6. Nine things a technical program manager does
  7. Octoversary
  8. What to read before starting or interviewing at github
  9. Analysis of federal dotgov domains pre biden edition

2020 13

  1. Over engineered home network for privacy and security
  2. 10 years
  3. Budget for the hidden internet tax
  4. Trust and safety features to build into your product before someone gets hurt
  5. Trust and safety is not a product edge case
  6. How I manage GitHub notifications | Ben Balter
  7. Tools of the trade: How I communicate at GitHub (and why) | Ben Balter
  8. Automate common open source community management tasks | Ben Balter
  9. Seven ways to set open source contributors up for success | Ben Balter
  10. Eight tips for working remotely | Ben Balter
  11. User blocking vs. user muting | Ben Balter
  12. 10 lessons learned fostering a community of communities at GitHub | Ben Balter
  13. Resolutions for sustaining and growing open source communities | Ben Balter

2019 3

  1. A community of communities: Empowering maintainers to grow communities around their code | Ben Balter
  2. Go near, go far, meet in the middle | Ben Balter
  3. What lawyers can learn from open source | Ben Balter

2018 3

  1. Problems, not solutions | Ben Balter
  2. Yes, No, Maybe | Ben Balter
  3. Why you probably shouldn't add a CLA to your open source project | Ben Balter

2017 8

  1. Everything an open source maintainer might need to know about open source licensing | Ben Balter
  2. Twelve tips for growing communities around your open source project | Ben Balter
  3. How not to prioritize a feature | Ben Balter
  4. Seven ways to consistently ship great features | Ben Balter
  5. Using protected branches to empower non-code contributors on GitHub | Ben Balter
  6. Your project's README is your project's constitution | Ben Balter
  7. Three easy ways to show employees they're appreciated | Ben Balter
  8. Bikeshed honeypots | Ben Balter

2016 12

  1. How I Atom (for prose) | Ben Balter
  2. Eight things I wish I knew my first week at GitHub | Ben Balter
  3. The seven habits of highly effective GitHubbers | Ben Balter
  4. How to make a product great | Ben Balter
  5. Why you shouldn't write your own open source license | Ben Balter
  6. Removing a feature is a feature | Ben Balter
  7. Books for geeks | Ben Balter
  8. Twelve things a product manager does | Ben Balter
  9. Moderating a controversial pull request | Ben Balter
  10. The missed opportunity that is the White House Open Source Policy | Ben Balter
  11. Optimizing for power users and edge cases is the easy part | Ben Balter
  12. How to derail any meeting | Ben Balter

2015 29

  1. Open source as Yelp for software | Ben Balter
  2. The six types of pull requests you see on GitHub | Ben Balter
  3. Why open source: 25 reasons to embrace it | Ben Balter
  4. Four characteristics of modern collaboration tools | Ben Balter
  5. Why everything should have a URL
  6. The three biggest challenges in government IT | Ben Balter
  7. Bringing open source workflows to the enterprise | Ben Balter
  8. How to add an "improve this content" button to your GitHub Pages site | Ben Balter
  9. How GitHub uses automated testing to empower developers to write less-corporate blog posts | Ben Balter
  10. Five principles to guide any government IT effort | Ben Balter
  11. The Zen of GitHub | Ben Balter
  12. Speak like a human: 12 ways tech companies can write less-corporate blog posts | Ben Balter
  13. Open procurement: procurement in an increasingly open source world | Ben Balter
  14. Merge by committee | Ben Balter
  15. Using GitHub Pages to showcase your organization's open source efforts | Ben Balter
  16. Copyright notices for open source projects | Ben Balter
  17. Test your content | Ben Balter
  18. Analysis of federal .gov domains, 2015 edition | Ben Balter
  19. The difference between 18F and USDS | Ben Balter
  20. 19 reasons why technologists don't want to work at your government agency | Ben Balter
  21. Five best practices in open source: external engagement | Ben Balter
  22. Five best practices in open source: internal collaboration | Ben Balter
  23. Explain like I'm five: Jekyll collections | Ben Balter
  24. Why your agency's first open source project is going to be a flop | Ben Balter
  25. Diff (and collaborate on) Microsoft Word documents using GitHub | Ben Balter
  26. What does your organization optimize for? | Ben Balter
  27. The fine print nobody reads: what to do so government can use your service | Ben Balter
  28. Hacking GitHub: 14 simple tools to help introduce open source to the uninitiated | Ben Balter
  29. Why you should care about HTTPS, even if you have nothing to hide | Ben Balter

2014 22

  1. Geeks and suits | Ben Balter
  2. The myth of government IT | Ben Balter
  3. A White House open source policy written by a geek | Ben Balter
  4. 15 rules for communicating at GitHub
  5. What's next for federal IT policy, IMHO | Ben Balter
  6. What is a Government Evangelist? | Ben Balter
  7. Everything a government attorney needs to know about open source software licensing | Ben Balter
  8. Eight reasons why government contractors should embrace open source software | Ben Balter
  9. If you liked it then you should have put a URL on it | Ben Balter
  10. Our code deserves better | Ben Balter
  11. Disclosed source is not the same as open source | Ben Balter
  12. Open source is (not) insecure | Ben Balter
  13. Three things you learn going from the most bureaucratic organization in the world to the least | Ben Balter
  14. Why isn't all government software open source? | Ben Balter
  15. Why FedRAMP actually makes it harder for government agencies to move to the cloud | Ben Balter
  16. Analysis of Federal Executive .govs (Part Deux) | Ben Balter
  17. Open government is so '08, or why collaborative government is the next big thing | Ben Balter
  18. How to identify a strong open source project | Ben Balter
  19. Word versus Markdown: more than mere semantics | Ben Balter
  20. Want to innovate government? Focus on culture | Ben Balter
  21. Header hover anchor links on GitHub Pages using Jekyll | Ben Balter
  22. Open source, not just software anymore | Ben Balter

2013 15

  1. Why no one uses your government data | Ben Balter
  2. That's not how the internet works | Ben Balter
  3. Jekyll: Where content is truly king | Ben Balter
  4. Ten Things You Learn as a Presidential Innovation Fellow | Ben Balter
  5. Treat Data as Code | Ben Balter
  6. Everyone Contributes | Ben Balter
  7. Friction | Ben Balter
  8. Bet on the little guy | Ben Balter
  9. The technology's the easy part | Ben Balter
  10. How to convert Shapefiles to GeoJSON maps for use on GitHub (and why you should) | Ben Balter
  11. An open letter to government CIOs | Ben Balter
  12. We've Been Selling Open Source Wrong | Ben Balter
  13. The store that sells only one thing. | Ben Balter
  14. The next big thing is already here | Ben Balter
  15. What is a 'Hacker'? | Ben Balter

2012 20

  1. Introducing JekyllBot | Ben Balter
  2. Securing the Status Quo | Ben Balter
  3. Deprecate Management | Ben Balter
  4. Why WordPress's next version should just give it a REST already | Ben Balter
  5. We've been trained to make paper | Ben Balter
  6. Open Source is not a verb | Ben Balter
  7. Open Source for Government | Ben Balter
  8. Welcome to the Post-CMS World | Ben Balter
  9. Government's Release of Federally Funded Source Code: Public Domain or Open Source? Yes. | Ben Balter
  10. The Demise of the Personal Dashboard | Ben Balter
  11. Why You Should Always Write Software as Open Source, Even When It's Never Going to Be | Ben Balter
  12. Publishing Government Data That Developers Will Actually Use | Ben Balter
  13. Free Yourself from the Tyranny of Sharepoint | Ben Balter
  14. WordPress as a Collaboration Platform | Ben Balter
  15. CFPB Accepts First Citizen-Submitted Code on Behalf of Federal Government | Ben Balter
  16. What's Missing from CFPB's Awesome New Source Code Policy | Ben Balter
  17. WordPress for Government - A Problem of Perception | Ben Balter
  18. PHP is Insecure (and Other Enterprise Open-Source F.U.D.) | Ben Balter
  19. GitHub for Journalism — What WordPress Post Forking could do to Editorial Workflows | Ben Balter
  20. Open-Source Alternatives to Proprietary Enterprise Software | Ben Balter

2011 22

  1. Towards a More Agile Government | Ben Balter
  2. Making WordPress More Shareable, Sociable, and Likeable | Ben Balter
  3. Federal Agility: a Cultural Solution to a Technical Problem | Ben Balter
  4. Why Digital Talent Doesn't Want To Work At Your Company | Ben Balter
  5. Advanced Workflow Management Tools for WP Document Revisions | Ben Balter
  6. Analysis of Federal Executive .govs | Ben Balter
  7. Why WordPress | Ben Balter
  8. Enterprise, Open Source, and Why Better is not Enough | Ben Balter
  9. WP Document Revisions — Document Management and Version Control for WordPress | Ben Balter
  10. Google Analytics Tracking of Jetpack (Sharedaddy) Social Engagement | Ben Balter
  11. Groupon and LivingSocial: a Limited-Time Offer | Ben Balter
  12. What's Your Hosting Company's Average Subpoena Response Time? | Ben Balter
  13. Fair Use, Excerpting, and Copying Content in the Internet Ecosystem | Ben Balter
  14. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Code | Ben Balter
  15. When all you have is a pair of bolt cutters... | Ben Balter
  16. Regular Expression to Parse Word-style Footnotes into WordPress's Simple Footnotes Format | Ben Balter
  17. Using WordPress to Craft Your Personal Brand | Ben Balter
  18. A Site By Any Other Name... | Ben Balter
  19. GW Course Schedule and Campus API | Ben Balter
  20. Twitter Goes to Bat for WikiLeaks, RTs @FBI's Court Order | Ben Balter
  21. WordPress Emphasis Plugin: Highlight and Permalink Text | Ben Balter
  22. The Files "in" the Computer -- Zoolander and the California Supreme Court | Ben Balter

2010 10

  1. Late-Night Infomercials: Guaranteed to Extend the 4th Amendment or Your Money Back | Ben Balter
  2. The Internet is Series of Tubes (oh, and Tollgates too) | Ben Balter
  3. Free Trade in China? Just Google it. | Ben Balter
  4. Twitter Mentions as Comments WordPress Plugin | Ben Balter
  5. Will Federal Contracting Officers Soon Have Their Heads in the Clouds? | Ben Balter
  6. What Fourteen-Century Apple Pie Teaches Us About Sharing | Ben Balter
  7. Removing the Barriers to Organizational Agility | Ben Balter
  8. Does Every Cloud Have a Silver Lining? | Ben Balter
  9. New Media Flak: Megaphone vs. Cocktail Party | Ben Balter
  10. WordPress Resume Plugin | Ben Balter