Recent content in Home on Brian P. Hogan
LLMs are trained on work that humans created. But now we’re telling humans to change how they write because “you sound like an LLM.” When you see “It’s not x, it’s y”. Or em-dashes, or other common constructs in AI writing, those are there because millions of documents by millions of people contain those things. I’ve worked with a lot of people who…
Documentation drives growth, if you enable it.
Some things I learned while using Claude Code to build projects and tools.
I keep seeing the narrative that “marketing is about storytelling.” It’s important to remember that the story isn’t about you, your product, or your features. Your customers are the heroes of those stories. Their victories are your victory. And you want the prospects to be the hero that saves the day with your product. They’re the heroes of your next story. What superpowers will you give them?…
My biggest frustration with modern docs is that much of the industry standardized on Markdown. And Markdown isn’t semantic. A keyword, a term, a “first use” item all don’t exist. You mix presentation with meaning rather than separating. XML for docs wasn’t fun but it was structured. You could denote terms. You could have actual admonitions. And so the solution seems to be hacks that turn Markdown…
Networking and referrals land you jobs because AI is screening you out of the application pile.
Summary Technical content expert and educator driving developer education strategy, execution, and growth. Professional Experience Head of Documentation - January 2025 - Present Tailscale Director of Developer Education - March 2022 - December 2024 Temporal Technologies (Remote) Pioneered Temporal’s Education function, crafting a comprehensive, hands-on competency-based curriculum for…
I started writing a new book. It’ll be short. But it’ll be hands-on. I’m writing it because this is the third time I’m implementing the topic, and I’m tired of writing the same explanations. I want a book to point at. I’m no stranger to this. There are docs for lots of things, but reference docs only tell a part of the story. People need a golden path. And I’m good at providing that.
December 18th, 2024 was my last day at Temporal Technologies.
I keep seeing how “LLMs are great teaching tools! I asked it to explain X to me and it did!” Don’t be fooled! Ask it to explain a technical topic you deeply understand and you’ll start to see where it makes things up. It is a predictive text engine. Sure, you can do all sorts of prompt hacking to get better results. But at the end of the day, if you don’t know the topic really well you will…
Make bootable macOS installers for various macOS versions and troubleshoot common errors.
This is a list of books on career development, content creation, and education that have shaped my personal philosophy and practices. I often share or recommend these books to others. The list of books I recommend changes often as I discover new books and shift my perspective. Building and Growing Your Career Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know The world is changing and you…
Software development doesn’t have to be your career. Use it to solve pain points in your life, like the one I had today.
Load JavaScript libraries dynamically on your page with appropriate event handling.
I started out the year thinking it would be “business as usual.” Boy was I wrong.
I am a technical content expert, people manager, web developer, author, teacher, book editor, and musician. I develop people, content, and code. I love technology and I love to help people be successful. I currently lead documentation at Tailscale where I help developers and network specialists understand, adopt, and scale secure private networks. From 2022 to 2024, I served as Director of…
I’ve been at Temporal for a full year. So, how’d it go?
Add command blocks to your site that show a prompt and let your visitors copy the command to the clipboard.
Capture audio from Ableton Live quickly using Loopback.
Open links in Chrome using a specific profile. Great for use when testing apps or creating shortcuts.
You may have heard of learning styles. But it turns out there’s no evidence to support them.
Vim’s Terminal mode lets you run a terminal within Vim and capture its output quickly.
Turn a list of URLs into a list of titles with a quick Ruby script that uses threads.
A look back on my time at DigitalOcean as I close the books on nearly six years at this great company.
This February, I did the RPM Challenge , a global event where musicians have the month of Febrary to record and release music. Like last year, I was able to choose to do a single song, an EP of 5 songs, or a full-length album. My goal was to do the 5-song EP, but February turned out to be a lot busier than I’d expected.
I performed my own music on DigitalOcean’s live stream as part of the Deploy conference.
A look at the changes that happen when my books are translated into other languages.
So you want to get good at something in a creative field like music, writing, or even coding? Folks might tell you that you need thousands of hours of study. But that’s not necessarily true. The key to getting good at something is to do it over and over while incorporating feedback along the way. Think of the one thing you’re amazing at. How long did it take you to get to your level of…
This is a list of sites for finding remote work. If you’re on Twitter you can also follow this list I made. We Work Remotely Remote OK Jobspresso Flexjobs Remote.co Justremote.co WFH.io Dailyremote Angel.co jsremotely Remote Leaf Remoteleads.io Hired.com Remoters.net Whoishiring.io RemoteML.com Freelancer.com SimplyHired Freshersworld Onlyremotejobs.com Peoplefirstjobs.com Workforthem.com…
Every February, I participate in the RPM Challenge, a global event where musicians have the month of Febrary to write, record, and release music. This year you could choose to do a single, an EP, or a full album. I’ve completed a five song EP called “Spark”, and you can listen to it on Soundcloud. I’ve been participating in this challenge since 2011. You can find my other…
This week Pragprog.com is having their 40% off ebook sale. Use code turkeysale2020 to get your discount at checkout. This post will be all about some books you should buy for yourself or that nerd in your life. First, let’s get the shameless plugs out of the way. This year I wrote a book on making static web sites with Hugo which gets rave reviews. Build Websites With Hugo. I have a great…
In this tutorial you’ll create unlisted pages in a Hugo site.
Today marks my four year anniversary at DigitalOcean, working on the Community tutorials and the Write for DOnations program. It’s been a ridiculous four years. I started out in 2016 as a technical editor, working with external authors to create tutorials that walk readers through installing software. It was the perfect opportunity to blend my teaching experience, systems experience, and…
My EPs “Red Zone” and “Hack to the 80s” are available on Spotify, Apple, and Google Music.
In this tutorial you’ll implement a Magic 8 Ball game using HTML, JavaScript, and the Canvas API.
A quick look at how I sped up an Elixir program.
CSS Grid lets you create web page layouts without resorting to external CSS frameworks. In this tutorial you’ll build a layout with CSS Grid and explore how the specification works.
Use Flexbox to build a navigation bar with elements evenly-spaced on large screens, and vertically stacked on small screens, all with minimal HTML and CSS.
My new book “Build Websites with Hugo” is available today in electronic format.
I am an active author and technical editor. I've written 10 full-length technical books, edited others, and written several smaller technical articles.
Provide context and improve understanding of complex topics with a repeatable formula for explaining code.
My musical creations, available on SoundCloud and through online stores.
Some words you think might motivate learners have the opposite effect.
Solving the “Who’s In Space” exercise from Exercises for Programmers in Vue.
Open files in different buffers.
I’ve been working on a new tune for a few months, and today I finally had the time to finish it off. It’s got a nice mix of crunchy guitar and classic 303 sounds mixed in with more heavy drums and synths. Happy with how this turned out. Give a listen!
I’ve been working on a new tune. I decided to capture myself doing some improv with pieces of the tune.
When I was in college, I spent hundreds of hours using ReBirth, a music-making app that emulated two Roland 303 bassline synths, an 808 drum machine, and a 909 drum machine. Rebirth also had a number of effects and filters included. Unfortunately, support for ReBirth died many years ago. It doesn’t even run on macOS. If you were lucky enough to buy an iPad version a few years ago, you can…
My recent books, available in print, PDF, ePub, and Kindle format.
About seven months ago, I began moving this site from a WordPress setup to a static site using Hugo, which I’m writing a book on right now. There’s still a ton of work to do, but it was bugging me that I didn’t have my own place to write. I’d been delaying writing a ton of content because my site wasn’t “ready”. But “ready” is a relative term…