Julia Evans
Julia Evans — Software developer and creator of Wizard Zines
Approachable explanations of Linux, networking, and debugging through zines and comics.
jvns.caIt feels really good when every problem I'm ever going to have has been solved already 1000 times and I can just get stuff done easily.
The blog that makes you feel like understanding computers is actually possible. Julia writes about systems programming, networking, and debugging with genuine curiosity and zero condescension. She's also the creator of Wizard Zines — illustrated guides that have become a beloved resource for developers at every level. Her superpower is remembering what it felt like to not understand something.
Written by Julia Evans since 2013.
Regular
Publishes weekly or bi-weekly
23
Independent Blog
English
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Recent posts from Julia Evans's RSS feed.
Replacing the old battery on rechargeable bike lights
Hello! Recently I needed bike lights for my bike. And I remembered that I already had rechargeable bike lights that I bought ten years ago, that I hadn’t tried in a long time. I tried to recharge them, but after fully charging them, they only worked for maybe 5 minutes before they turned off again. I don’t know much about electronics, but I’ve been curious about whether it’s possible to fix old electronics for a long time, and this seemed like the perfect repair project b...
Some more things about Django I've been enjoying
Hello! I’m on a funny journey right now where I’m trying to learn how to make websites in a sort of 2010 style, where I have an SQL database and render some HTML on the backend. It’s kind of an interesting journey because it doesn’t necessarily feel “easy” to me to make websites in this way: I never learned how to do it in the 2000s or 2010s, and there’s a lot I need to learn. So here are some Django features that make building this kind of site feel mor...
Learning a few things about running SQLite
Hello! I’ve been working on a Django site recently, and I decided to use SQLite as the database. When I was getting started with using SQLite as database for a website I read a bunch of blog posts about how it is totally fine to use SQLite in production for a small site and I think it is totally fine, but what I did not fully appreciate is that SQLite is still a database, databases are complicated, and I do not know a lot about operating databases. So here are a couple of small things I&rs...
Moving away from Tailwind, and learning to structure my CSS
Hello! 8 years ago, I wrote excitedly about discovering Tailwind. At that time I really had no idea how to structure my CSS code and given the choice between a pile of complete chaos and Tailwind, I was really happy to choose Tailwind. It helped me make a lot of tiny sites! I spent the last week or so migrating a couple of sites away from Tailwind and towards more semantic HTML + vanilla CSS, and it was SO fun and SO interesting, so here are some things I learned! As usual I’m not a full-t...
Links to CSS colour palettes
A while back I decided to stop using Tailwind for new projects and to just write vanilla CSS instead. But one thing I missed about Tailwind was the colour palette (here as CSS). If I wanted a light blue I could just use blue-100 and if I didn’t like it maybe try blue-200 or blue-50. I’m not very good with colours so it makes a big difference to me to have a reasonable colour palette that somebody who is better at colour than me has thought about. But I’m also a little tired of...
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Julia makes complex systems feel approachable — and makes you excited to dig in rather than intimidated.