Jvns.ca is the personal blog of Julia Evans, a software engineer and writer known for making complex technical topics easy and fun to understand. Her posts cover Linux, networking, debugging, command-line tools, and systems programming, often using real-world examples and colorful visual explanations. Julia’s writing focuses on practical learning, showing how tools like strace, tcpdump, git, and Python actually work under the hood and helping developers gain confidence in understanding what their systems are doing. She is also the creator of the popular Zine series, which turns topics like debugging, shell commands, and performance profiling into engaging illustrated mini-books. With her clear and approachable teaching style, Jvns.ca has become one of the most beloved resources for developers who want to truly understand how computers work.
20 articles from this blog
A developer shares their experience switching from Vim to the Helix text editor, highlighting its built-in language servers and improved search.
Announcing a new zine explaining the hidden rules and inconsistencies of the terminal, based on 20 years of experience.
A guide for non-C programmers on how to compile C programs using `make`, covering compiler installation, dependencies, and common issues.
An exploration of ANSI escape codes, their standards, reliability issues, and potential for future improvement in terminal usability.
A comprehensive guide on how to add a directory to your PATH environment variable for bash, zsh, and fish shells.
Analysis of a survey on the most frustrating aspects of using the terminal, based on responses from 1600 experienced users.
A guide to the many components needed for a modern terminal setup, from shell choice to color support and keybindings.
Explores unwritten rules and conventions that command-line terminal programs tend to follow for consistent user behavior.
Explains why command line pipes appear stuck due to output buffering and how to fix it.
A guide to importing frontend JavaScript libraries without using a build system, covering ES Modules, classic scripts, and CommonJS.
The author explains why they created a new 'Today I Learned' (TIL) section on their blog to archive useful tools and facts.
An exploration of ASCII control characters in the terminal, explaining their functions, categories, and limitations.
The author details their journey to reduce memory usage in their 'Mess With DNS' service by optimizing how IP address lookup data is stored.
A developer documents the process and specific changes required to upgrade their blog from Hugo v0.40 to v0.135.
Explores common terminal color contrast issues, explains ANSI color inconsistencies, and discusses two methods to reconfigure terminal colors.
A developer shares notes on Go 1.22's improved built-in router and using sqlc to generate database code, based on personal project experience.
A developer shares their favorite features of the Fish shell, including autosuggestions and smart tab completion, after 7 years of daily use.
The author details their journey migrating the 'Mess With DNS' educational tool from a custom, flawed DNS implementation to the more robust PowerDNS server.
A Go programmer shares lessons learned from debugging a struct copying issue and recommends the '100 Go Mistakes' resource.
Explains why typing in the terminal is confusing due to inconsistent text editing across different programs and shares useful tips.
