When we created Glitch, we set out to eliminate all the barriers to creating a full stack web app. It’s the easiest possible way to instantly go from an idea to a running app, because we simplified coding collaboration and version control and configuration and all the other complex parts. It’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams: our community has now created well over 5 million apps on Glitch. So, now that it’s easy to create apps, we had to solve the next big problem: running your apps.

Making Apps Easy

Traditionally, cloud web services have just been too damn hard to get started with, from figuring out exactly which services you need, to trying to guess how much all of those complicated pieces are going to cost. But just like Glitch simplified version control and coding collaboration and app deployment, we’re simplifying the ability to run real, reliable apps in the cloud. …

Many people have lost trust in the tech industry, but there’s a concrete step we can take to do something about it.

Most people who use technology don’t stop to wonder, “Who’s on the board of directors of the company that made this product?” But in a moment when tech is increasingly leaving us feeling uneasy, or even creeped out, unsure if we can trust what’s happening with our data or whether a company has our best intentions in mind, it turns out this is a question that matters.

So today, at Glitch, we’re doing something unprecedented in pushing for accountability and inclusion for a tech company: We’re making an open call for a board member for our company. …

You almost certainly can remember when you first got excited about technology, or about the internet. You discovered that somebody else shared the same eccentric interest as you, or you felt empowered by the idea that you could instantly create things and share them with anyone.

But somewhere along the way, amidst all the great things technology brought us, we started to get a lot more worried about the effect that these apps and devices have on our lives. We started to wonder how trillion-dollar companies would ever consider our needs. …

TLDR: We’ve renamed Fog Creek to Glitch, Inc. to represent our single-minded focus on Glitch. We’re hiring for a bunch of new positions (with more to come!) and welcoming a slate of new advisors. And it’s all in service of making Glitch one of the most important creative communities on the Internet, and having our company set the standard for thoughtful, ethical technology.

Back in 2000, two visionary founders, Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor, envisioned a new tech company that would distinguish itself by the way it treated people — both its employees and its customers. …

First, the fundamentals: For current Manuscript customers, nothing is changing today — neither functionality nor licensing. And good things are changing in the future. We see lots of good progress coming, like long-overdue platform improvements, modernization of infrastructure behind Manuscript, and a re-engagement with the community to revitalize one of the most venerable and respected tools for creating great software.

Manuscript has been part of Fog Creek’s DNA for nearly two decades. First as FogBugz, which pioneered the market for bug tracking and project management, and then later with the addition of Kiln, which was groundbreaking in its innovations around version control. …

We’re excited to reach the one million app milestone as it shows how we’ve created the easiest way for coders to create and collaborate online. With functionality like real-time collaborative editing, instant deployment, automatic secure hosting and Rewind, we’ve removed many of the technical barriers to getting started with building on the web. By turning “developer tools” into a set of creative and expressive tools, we’ve enabled people of any skill level to be able to create online.

So it makes sense that the millionth Glitch app was created by someone who’s learning to code. freeCodeCamp is a community that helps you learn to code and get experience by contributing to open source projects used by nonprofits. And it was a freeCodeCamp student learning Node.js used Glitch who created the project that marked the million-app milestone. freeCodeCamp was an early adopter of Glitch and their community members use it extensively to learn back-end development, testing, and security. Their approach is hands-on — through coding challenges and building projects, you learn to code, which is exactly the type of thing we wanted to help make more accessible when we set out building Glitch. …

The tech world has had a little time to digest the dramatic news that Microsoft is acquiring GitHub, and is starting to form its opinions. Amidst the flurry of hot takes, most of the immediate responses focused on the obvious business value for Microsoft: boosting its connection to developers and helping its Azure cloud platform to compete with Amazon.

But as we’ve been creating Glitch, we’ve learned a lot about what happens when coders collaborate together in realtime, and this reveals a deeper insight into where coding is headed. …

Here’s the short version: We’re excited about GitHub becoming part of Microsoft, and think it’ll be good news for developers. But based on the huge adoption we’re seeing for Glitch and our own decade of experience in building version control tools, it’s clear many developers also think it’s time to explore new approaches, so we want to build on this milestone for the coding community by articulating a new vision for social coding.

GitHub + Microsoft = Good 👍

Let’s put it short and sweet: Microsoft buying GitHub is likely to be good news for developers. There’s no better evidence of how Microsoft has been revitalized under the leadership of Satya Nadella than to point to bold moves like this, which would have seemed incredible (and also not seemed credible!) in the past. Old-timers can remember when Microsoft was often described as the Evil Empire, but their moves to embrace open source and non-Windows platforms have seemed sincere and sustained, and we’re happy to see that flourish. …