With a nod to both the serious and funny sides of technical writing, the best software writing i. Avram joel spolsky born 1965 is a software engineer and writer. With all the time you save, you can go to medical school. However, he only writes stupid things or daytoday doodling. How i see joels list 18 years later noteworthy the journal blog. Top five wrong reasons you dont have testers joel on software. Many times, thinking things out in advance saved us serious development headaches later on. Theres a small number of blogs which i read religiously, and joel spolskys joel on software is right at the top of that list. Appendixthe joel test1 have you ever heard of sema. My personal top 5 in no order painless software schedules the law of leaky abstractions. Hes also the name behind the joel on software blog, which consistently ranks top or top ten on software mustread lists. I am an expert on software development, the founder of fog creek software, and the cocreator of stack overflow and trello. Joel spolsky is the founder and ceo of fog creek software in new york city and the host of the blog joel on software.
It didnt make any sense then and it doesnt make sense now. Luckily for us, a software developer named joel spolsky made our. When youre starting out as a technical blogger, youll inevitably stumble across joel on software. A while backthe year 2000 to be exactjoel spolsky wrote a blog post entitled. We share what weve learned about how to make great software, both by writing about our ideas and by creating products, like fogbugz, trello and gomix, that help others make great technology. Here i am, typing away, writing all this awesome code, and nobody cares. As an independent, privatelyowned company, weve been making customers happy since the turn of the century.
Back in 2000 joel spolsky published a test to help gauge the quality of a software development team. The three skills every software developer should learn by nick heath nick heath is a computer science student and was formerly a journalist at. Joel spolsky, cofounder, fog creek software joel spolsky founded fog creek software with his friend michael pryor in 2000. This is a book worth checking out, even if youre not a software developer. In august 2000, blogger and software entrepreneur joel spolsky wrote the joel test. In fact, a lot of software teams dont even believe in testing. He later founded fog creek software in 2000 and launched the joel on software blog. And on diverse and occasionally related matters that will prove of interest to software developers, designers, and managers, and to those who, whether by good fortune or ill. Like its predecessor, more joel on software, by joel spolsky, is a collection of essays that had been published in the joel on software blog. Software quality and ibm lotus notes domino teamstudio.
Back in 2000, joel spolsky published a set of 12 best practices for a software development team. Joel spolsky compares the task switching penalty for computers and computer programmers. My website joel on software is popular with software developers around the world. Making this change in the spec took an hour or two. Programmingemployment decisions are a critical managerial process. Thats a bit of an understatement, since spolsky founded trello, fog creek software, and stack overflow.
The neat thing about the joel test is that its easy to get a quick yes or no to each question. Joel spolsky deep stack traces can be a sign for good code quality. Joel spolsky is a programmer, writer and author of the extremely popular programming. Free content blogs simply dont incentivize the authors to tell.
Checkgit offers the full suite of automated code quality checks right in github. In 2000 i cofounded fog creek software, where we created lots of cool things like the fogbugz bug tracker, trello, and glitch. I certainly dont always agree with what he writes, but even when i dont he always. He was a program manager on the microsoft excel team between 1991 and 1994. Its nice having a collection of highquality writing related to software and the business in one place instead of.
I am convinced one of joel spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the joel test, a. I just wanted to make note of joel spolskys highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate the quality of a software team. Its been around for a long while now and there are only 12 points but its very good. The shlemiel way of software author joel spolsky talks about what microsoft has in common with his grandparents and what isaac bashevis singer has to do with codegenerating. Joel spolsky is a software engineer, writer and entrepreneur. Its a sort of simplified checklist to measure the quality of your software team and, i. The point is that everyone is full of shit to some extent, no matter how good their intentions may be. The joel test updated for programmers simple programmer. The software craftsmanship movement embraces the idea that not all developers are at the same level, but part of a software craftspersons job is to help the rest of their team to improve. Spolsky asserts that the real trick to management is to make people identify with the goals youre trying to achieve.
The quality of these essays is more uneven than in the first book, but there are nonetheless some true gems. Most recently, he cofounded stack overflow, a questionandanswer site for software developers. Not without a hit on every level time, quality, and the ability to think deeply. A weblog by joel spolsky, a programmer working in new york city, about software and software companies. In the 1980s everyone was running around terrified that japanese software companies were setting up software factories that could churn out high quality code on an assembly line. Joel spolsky founder of stack overflow, trello, and fog creek software now glitch. The quality of these essays is more uneven than in the first. Learn more clarification on joel spolskys unicode article. Now that i have my own company, i finally decided to do something about it. Now that i have my own company i finally decided to do something about it. Joel on software covers every conceivable aspect of software programmingfrom the best way to write code, to the best way to design an office in which to write code.
You would think that after all the quality mania of the 80s, with all kinds of. Joel spolsky, a popular online commentator on software development, has argued strongly in favor of big design up front. They didnt have a specific product in mind, but were motivated to. Big design up front bduf is a software development approach in which the programs design is to be completed and perfected before that programs implementation is started.
You may have heard about joel spolskys 12 steps for better software spolsky, 2005, pp. He is the author of joel on software, a blog on software development, and the creator of the project management software trello. In this talk full of humor, joel spolsky captivates and entertains the audience by talking about how how he built and grew stack overflow, and. How to assess the quality of the development team in 3. In particular, joel s essay that details a method for prioritizing candidate features for a.
I also worked with jeff atwood to create stack overflow and served as ceo. And on diverse and occasionally related matters that will prove of interest to software developers, designers, and managers, and to those who, whether by good. The last few weeks, a public dispute has been going on between joel spolsky and robert c martin uncle bob about testdriven development and about the solid principles of oo design. The three things i would tell people to learn are economics, writing and c programming. Software quality, or the lack thereof, is something everybody loves to gripe about. Im joel spolsky, a software developer in new york city. If you havent heard of the joel test, its a 12item, deadsimple. Joel spolsky is an idiot joel spolsky is a software developer residing in the new york area who have lot of readers for his blog. I quickly used it to gauge the quality of companies i was interviewing. Back in 20, i took a course on software architecture, process, and management. By external measures, joel spolsky is a productive developer. Its a fairly esoteric system for measuring how good a software team is.
Joel spolskys concise guide to finding the best technical talent ebook written by avram joel spolsky. The 2020 guide to the joel test for programming hubspot blog. Frustrated by the lack of wellwritten essays on software engineering, joel spolsky of. The great part about it is that it takes about 3 minutes. In fact, long stack traces can be a good sign in terms of software quality. What is the net worth of joel spolsky, founder of stack. Techrepublic do you need a degree in computer science. You would think that after all the quality mania of the 80s, with all kinds of meaningless international quality certifications like iso9000 and buzzwords like sixsigma, managers today would understand that having high quality products makes good business sense.
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