Danny Thompson

There is a VERY distinct difference between Vibe Coding and Software Engineering with AI.

😂😂😂😂

😏😂

Did you know Jira is statistically the most fit software on the market? It's true because it is always... preparing for the next sprint.

Vibe coder "I made sure the database and everything was working"

"Great! Wait... Uhhh Where is the data?"

Vibe coder "Well I had to make sure the DROP TABLE command worked as well otherwise how would I be sure? So I dropped the table."

We may have two sponsors committed to The Commit Your Code Conference 2026 IN JUST TWO DAYS after reaching out! 👀 Y'all, we may end up putting on something special this year at @commityourcode.bsky.social

If you were me and you were setting up CYC26, what would you do differently? 🤔

A wide shot of a fluffy cream-colored cat resting in a white mesh-style chair. Behind the chair stands a tall double-ball artificial topiary. The scene is bright and minimalist, featuring a wooden dresser on the left and a glimpse of a white desk with books in the lower right corner.

A fluffy, light-cream pointed cat curled up comfortably in a white modern grid-pattern armchair. The cat is facing away from the camera, looking toward a green topiary plant in the background. To the left, a natural wood dresser is partially visible against a white wall.

Y'all, I am not an expert on body language but... I think my cat is mad at me for not giving him snacks when it was time to eat breakfast...

Community is the ultimate cheat code to success.

If you are sitting at home right now feeling stuck, frustrated, or ready to throw in the towel... hear me on this.

Get. In. The. Room.

You never know who you may end up helping or being helped by!

Chasing a goal is incredibly lonely.
Try explaining a merge conflict to your family and watch their eyes glaze over. But a room full of developers? They feel that pain in their soul!

You share a struggle, a laugh (and maybe some 🍪), and realize you aren't fighting alone.

Five people sitting at a table

A girl selling girl scout cookies with two men in front talking

Several groups working on their laptops and talking

A long table with several groups around

A 5-minute conversation you had last night MIGHT BE the exact reason someone didn't quit their dreams today!

The true value of an event isn't the speaker on stage. It's the people sitting next to you.

Look at last night's DSD meetup. THIS is community. 👇

Stay tuned here! I know I have some followers from Austin!

100%! You already know!

You don't have to tell me twice!

Image is of the conference sponsor area

I am ramping up our efforts for The Commit Your Code Conference 2026! Aiming for the end of October.

I have a prospectus, you have a company. What's the best way to share this prospectus with your org?

8,960 total attendees between in person and virtual!

#CYC26

AUSTIN, TX putting this on your radar now, I will definitely be putting on a meetup there within the next few months 👀

Y'all have been asking for a couple years so let's do it big!

Image is of a spreadsheet like display of information inside of an application that showcases a cohort and the way that they are organizing students between active students alumni accepted applied rejected dropouts etc .

For our Cohort I always managed it with Spreadsheets & I got tired of it. Spent today building out an internal Cohort Management System.

Stack: Next.js + TypeScript + @appwrite.io

Save so much time!
The best part, I'm using role based auth to protect personal data from volunteers.

A screenshot of a mobile Discord-style messaging interface within a channel named "# general." At the top, a user with a profile picture of a dog sitting next to a birthday cake has posted an enthusiastic message. The text starts with a line of random keyboard-smash characters, followed by: "I JUST GOT A JOB OFFER I AM SCREAMING WITH DELIGHT." Below this, there are several reaction emojis with high counts, including custom emojis of a man's face, party poppers, fire, a rocket, and clapping hands. The message concludes with: "So grateful to this community and for all of yalls support!!!" followed by more fire and "100" reactions.

THEY GOT THE JOB!!!!

We currently have our cohorts going on and it's been a VERY busy week but nothing is better than seeing someone land a job in tech on a Friday after being laid off for a year.

Came in the discord, changed his strategies, and the rest is history!
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

A square "Clean" style speaker card for Danny Thompson. It features a centered, square portrait of Danny wearing a blue blazer and patterned shirt. Above the photo is the Dallas Software Developers logo. Below the photo, his name "DANNY THOMPSON" is in white text on a dark banner, followed by his title, "Senior Developer Advocate @ Atlassian." The bottom text reads "Dallas Software Developers Group, Dallas, TX."

A square "Split" style speaker card with a high-contrast design. The left side has a bright orange background with a close-up, background-removed photo of Danny Thompson. The right side is a dark navy blue background featuring the text "I'M SPEAKING AT Dallas Software Developers Group, Dallas, TX." Below this, Danny’s name and title are highlighted in orange and white. The Dallas Software Developers logo is in the bottom right corner.

A square "Bold" style speaker card on a dark navy background. On the right, a portrait of Danny Thompson in a blue blazer is shown with rounded corners. On the left, the text "I'm speaking at Dallas Software Developers Group" is displayed. His name, "Danny Thompson," and title, "Senior Developer Advocate," are highlighted in bright blue rectangular badges. The Dallas Software Developers logo is positioned in the bottom right.

A screenshot of the EventConvo "Speaker Cards" customization interface. The dashboard shows a preview of a "Split" template with Danny Thompson’s photo. Options on the right allow users to toggle between "Bold," "Clean," and "Split" templates, select accent colors like "EventConvo Orange," and apply photo effects like "Remove Background" and "Drop Shadow." A sidebar lists group members and upcoming events like "Intro to Generative AI for Developers."

Yesterday with JavaScript I made a speaker card tool. One huge pain point with organizers is speaker cards. Especially if they are not great designers.

I wanted to solve that!
Give them the easiest way to download speaker assets.

Just a few clicks and it's done!

Today Gemini 3.1 Pro just dropped. It's great and so are the benchmarks. Every LLM release that comes out is great. It functions well and all that.

It still gets A TON WRONG.
If you don't know how to identify it, explain it, and understand programming to fix it, you are screwed.

Even better! Right now it is in Beta, so the events aren't real until we solve as much as we can before bringing folks on but would love feedback from the attendee perspective. I'll DM you

If you want to check it out I can share it with you as I still have Beta testers testing things out. Would love all the feedback I can get.

Lighthouse accessibility audit results showing a perfect score of 100, displayed in a green circle. Below the score, a note explains that automatic detection covers only a subset of issues and recommends manual testing. The page lists 10 additional items to manually check, including keyboard focusability of interactive controls, logical tab order, visual order matching DOM order, focus management, HTML5 landmark elements, offscreen content handling, and proper ARIA roles and labels for custom controls.

Best part, look at this lighthouse score! It's a platform FOR EVERYONE in the community. No exceptions.

EventConvo landing page featuring the headline 'Your Social Life Reimagined' with tagline 'Designed for Connection.' The page highlights six key features: 'Discover What Moves You' for finding meetups, conferences, and workshops; 'Your Visibility, Your Control' for customizable profiles; 'Move at Your Pace' emphasizing no forced social loops; 'Connect with Trust' via QR code profile sharing; 'Built for Organizers' with community leadership tools; and 'Find Your Stage' with a Speaker Mode toggle for aspiring speakers. The design uses a blue, orange, and white color scheme with friendly illustrations.

Why have we normalized 'organizer burnout' is just part of the job to run free community events instead of a lack of support from our software?

I either built the best meetup platform no one will use, OR a new industry standard.

So far, the Beta testers are telling me I nailed it! 👀

Some of y'all have been waiting on the same "tomorrow" for 3+ years.

I'm sure it will be great when it finally comes!

In an agentic era, in person events are going to be significantly more valuable than they are now.

TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY AT THE NEW JOB!

Senior Developer Advocate at Atlassian. It's official y'all!

I am pumped!
Haters will say this is AI but we all know this really happened.

I am working on the Atlassian Forge team! It's a Serverless App Development Platform!

A web-based design interface for an event banner. The top section shows customization options including a "Dark Tech" color palette, font selection (Inter is selected), and a light overlay set to 40% intensity. The bottom section displays a preview of a horizontal banner for a "Cloud-Native Architecture Workshop" dated 2026-02-20. The banner features a split design with a dark navy left side for text and a gray geometric abstract pattern on the right.

A web-based design interface showing a different layout for the same event banner. The customization controls at the top show "Inter" font selected and "None" selected for the overlay, with a photo blend slider set to 11%. The banner preview features the "Cloud-Native Architecture Workshop" title centered over a purple-tinted background image of an audience at a tech conference. Transparent geometric shapes and circles are layered over the background photo.

I wanted to solve the issue for meetup organizers & event hosts to be able to make event images in a couple clicks.

Well, I did it!!!

The entire project is made with TypeScript, Next.js, TailwindCSS, and more!

After a year of work, this project is now at almost 140,000 lines of code!

Thanks Marco! 🙏

Just had a conversation this morning that reminded me of this exchange and wanted to share it in case others were finding themselves in this scenario.

A screenshot of a chat conversation between Danny Thompson (DThompsonDev) and a mentee whose name is redacted. Danny asks if they feel ready for a workshop, and the mentee admits to being nervous. Danny responds with a challenge: "Is the material you're teaching actually bad? Like, are you about to go teach them something that doesn't work?" The mentee immediately defends the work, replying, "What! no! It's good stuff but I just want to make sure I do it justice." Danny follows up with, "Did you under prepare?"

A screenshot of the continued conversation. The mentee replies, "No. I prepped all the material and everything," but admits public speaking is uncomfortable. Danny responds with the payoff: "Then perfect. You just confirmed it for me and yourself that you are the absolutely correct person to be giving this talk today." He lists the evidence—"Material is solid, the prep is there"—and explains that he asked the hard questions just to get the mentee to say the truth out loud.

Comforting Imposter Syndrome is a waste of time. Corner it instead!

If I told you "Don't sweat it! You got this!" It would go in one ear and out the other. It feels empty and in a serious moment, almost useless.

I force them to look at the evidence.
Confidence through evidence