What is The Third Bit and who is Greg Wilson?

Updated

The Third Bit (third-bit.com) is Greg Wilson's personal and professional site. It gathers his workshops, recent posts, papers, and books in one place. It is a working site for people who teach, write, or build research software, not a company product page. If you want to understand Wilson's background, find his writing, or book one of his workshops, this is the place to start.

Who is Greg Wilson?

The site's heading and excerpt describe him as:

  • Co-founder and first Executive Director of Software Carpentry
  • Co-founder of It Will Never Work in Theory
  • Co-founder of The Architecture of Open Source Applications
  • ACM SIGSOFT Influential Educator of the Year
  • Co-winner of the Jolt Award for Beautiful Code
  • Fellow of the Python Software Foundation
  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, the University of Edinburgh
  • Author, co-author, or editor of 14 books on programming and two for children

The through-line is teaching programmers and researchers how to work more effectively, and then writing down what worked.

What is on the site?

The page is organized into four sections, each serving a different purpose.

Workshops

These are sessions Wilson offers to host in person or online; the page asks you to email him if you want to host one and points to a rider for details. The listed workshops are:

Workshop What it covers
Organizational Change An introduction to organizational change for people with research backgrounds
Closing Time How to wind down research and software projects, deliberately or on short notice
Teaching Tech Together A one-day introduction to modern teaching practices for programmers and data scientists
How to Not Be Wrong About AI What software engineers need to know to tell good studies from bad ones
Managing Research Software Projects Ideas and tools for managing a team of research software developers

If you run a lab, a department, or a training program, these titles map directly onto common problems: teaching better, ending projects cleanly, and evaluating AI claims.

Recent Posts

The posts shown are a series on "Frml," a small language being built step by step: next steps, built-in functions, arrays, loops, and contracts, dated October 2026. The page links to an archive and to Mastodon for following new posts. This section is useful if you want to watch a language take shape or see how Wilson explains design decisions in public.

Recent Papers

The listed papers are short, practical guides:

  • 2024: Experience Report: It Will Never Work in Theory
  • 2023: Ten simple rules for writing a technical book
  • 2022: Twelve quick tips for software design
  • 2021: Ten quick tips for staying safe online
  • 2020: Ten quick tips for making things findable

The "ten simple rules" and "quick tips" format is a good entry point if you need advice you can apply the same day.

Books

The books section lists titles with a one-line description and year:

  • Software Design by Example in Python (2024): two dozen worked examples that teach design by building the tools programmers use every day
  • Software Design by Example in JavaScript (2022): twenty worked examples in the same style
  • Research Software Engineering with Python (2021): a textbook on building research software and running research software projects
  • JavaScript for Data Science (2020): an introduction to JavaScript and web programming for data scientists
  • Teaching Tech Together (2019): an introduction to evidence-based teaching for people with technical backgrounds
  • The Architecture of Open Source Applications: essays describing the architectures of fifty open source projects

How to decide whether it is useful to you

  • You teach or train programmers and researchers. Start with Teaching Tech Together and the workshop of the same name.
  • You build or manage research software. Look at Research Software Engineering with Python and the Managing Research Software Projects workshop.
  • You want to learn software design by reading code. The Software Design by Example books are built for that.
  • You want to host a session for your group. Email Wilson about a workshop and check the rider for terms; the page does not list prices, so ask directly.
  • You just want to follow his writing. Use the posts archive or Mastodon.

The site does not present itself as a commercial storefront, and the page gives no pricing or login details. Treat workshop availability and terms as things to confirm by email rather than assume.