Joel Spolsky

Progress on the Block Protocol

Joel Spolsky argues that the Semantic Web vision from 1999 has failed because adding structured markup to web content is too much work for publishers. He proposes the Block Protocol as a solution: an open protocol that lets developers create reusable, structured content blocks (like 'book' or 'address') that any web editor can embed, automatically generating semantic markup behind the scenes. The key insight is that structured data will only become widespread if adding it is easier than not adding it. He announces a WordPress plugin that brings Block Protocol blocks to the 43% of the web powered by WordPress, making any block immediately widely usable. The post frames this as the practical first step toward finally delivering on the Semantic Web's original promise.

Making the web better. With blocks!

Joel Spolsky announces the Block Protocol, an open standard for making web content blocks interchangeable across different editors, blogging tools, and content management systems. He observes that while many web editors have converged on the concept of insertable blocks (paragraphs, tables, kanban boards, etc.), each platform implements them from scratch with no interoperability. The Block Protocol aims to let any block work in any embedding application, so developers can write a block once and have it usable everywhere. He emphasizes the protocol is open, free, and non-proprietary, and highlights that blocks can carry typed, structured data making web content machine-readable without scraping.

Kinda a big announcement

Joel Spolsky announces that Stack Overflow is being acquired by Prosus, a holding company, while reflecting on the slow pace of programming progress over decades. He argues that despite new frameworks and tools, building web applications remains roughly as difficult as it always was, with the notable exception of Stack Overflow itself, which genuinely changed how developers learn and get help. He reassures the community that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently with the same team and mission. He also briefly introduces his new venture, HASH, which aims to make web data more structured and programmatically accessible.

HASH: a free, online platform for modeling the world

Joel introduces HASH, a free online platform for agent-based simulation modeling. He explains the concept by contrasting simple mathematical relationships with complex systems where inputs and outputs aren't linearly related. Using a warehouse staffing example, he shows how adding a fifth employee can produce zero additional throughput due to workers getting in each other's way. He argues that even when you can't model a system mathematically, you can simulate individual agent behaviors to understand emergent outcomes.

So, how’s that retirement thing going, anyway?

Joel Spolsky provides an update on his life after stepping back as CEO of Stack Overflow, describing his current role as chairman of three companies. He discusses the transition to new CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar, the evolution of Fog Creek into Glitch under Anil Dash, and his newest venture HASH, an open-source agent-based simulation platform. He frames this period as a sabbatical rather than retirement, noting he's also spending free time on LED electronics hobby projects.

Welcome, Prashanth!

Joel Spolsky announces Prashanth Chandrasekar as Stack Overflow's new CEO, effective October 1st, 2019. The search process evaluated nearly 200 candidates before selecting Chandrasekar, who previously built a new business unit at Rackspace. Spolsky emphasizes that Stack Overflow needs experienced leadership to accelerate its enterprise business, particularly Stack Overflow Teams. He notes the company's goals around diversity, inclusivity, and expanding into proprietary knowledge management for organizations. Spolsky will remain as Chairman of the Board.

The next CEO of Stack Overflow

Joel Spolsky announces he is stepping down as CEO of Stack Overflow and moving to Chairman of the Board. He reflects on the platform's growth from a fledgling site where only a third of conference attendees had heard of it to one of the top 50 websites in the world with 100 million monthly visitors. He highlights the company's business success, including profitability, $70m in revenue, and 200% annual growth in SaaS products. Spolsky argues that Stack Overflow's next chapter requires a different type of leader focused on making the community more diverse, inclusive, and welcoming to newcomers. He emphasizes that as the developer population grows rapidly, Stack Overflow must remove obstacles for new programmers rather than driving them away with rudeness and rigid rules.

Announcing Stack Overflow for Teams

Joel Spolsky announces Stack Overflow for Teams, a paid service that creates private Q&A spaces on Stack Overflow for companies and organizations. He argues that development teams have long struggled to capture institutional knowledge in searchable, written form. He dismisses wikis as feeling like homework that produces stale content, and chat archives as capturing conversations rather than knowledge. The Q&A format works better because questions are answered for someone who needs help immediately, and the results are searchable and structured. The product integrates directly into stackoverflow.com with team-specific tags, notifications, and clear public/private separation.

Strange and maddening rules

Spolsky reflects on Stack Overflow's tension between maintaining quality standards and welcoming newcomers to programming. He draws parallels between debugging techniques like rubber duck debugging and the site's question-asking requirements, arguing that these rules serve a purpose even when they frustrate beginners. Using the history of comp.lang.c as a cautionary tale of a community that drove away newcomers by catering only to experts, he explains why Stack Overflow was designed to welcome beginner questions. However, he acknowledges that the site's rules and community snarkiness create real obstacles for new developers, particularly those from underrepresented groups, and commits to improving the experience.

A Dusting of Gamification

Joel Spolsky reflects on Stack Overflow's reputation system as a 'dusting of gamification' — lightweight game mechanics that drive good behavior without being the core product. He traces the lineage from Slashdot's karma to Reddit's karma to Stack Overflow's reputation points, explaining how simple numerical scores signal community norms and reward contributors. He acknowledges the dark side: downvotes feel punishing, and the system can feel unwelcoming, particularly to underrepresented groups. He concludes that gamification is a weak force — useful for nudging people toward things they already want to do, but incapable of driving behavior on its own.

Birdcage liners

Joel Spolsky explains why he quit Twitter and Facebook, arguing that both platforms inadvertently evolved into engines of outrage and addiction. Twitter's 140-character limit strips nuance from communication, turning complex thoughts into inflammatory bumper stickers that spark flame wars. Facebook's machine learning algorithm, optimized purely for engagement, discovered that intermittent reinforcement—burying useful friend updates among garbage content—keeps users compulsively returning. Spolsky argues these selfish algorithms are destroying civil society by creating partisan echo chambers and replacing meaningful action with slacktivism. He concludes that software designers bear responsibility for the social consequences of their design decisions, and notes Facebook's announced pivot toward meaningful connections as a sign the company is finally accepting that responsibility.

Developers’ side projects

Joel Spolsky explains why software companies need to own all intellectual property created by their employees, including side projects. He walks through the legal mechanics of copyright assignment and 'work for hire' agreements, explaining why the default assumption that 'work done at home is mine' is dangerously wrong. He discusses how state laws like California's provide some protection for employees working on unrelated projects on their own time and equipment, but notes the 'related to employer's line of work' clause is ambiguous enough to create a chilling effect. The practical conclusion is that all software companies will try to own everything employees create, and the real variable is how aggressively management chooses to enforce those rights.

RIP CityDesk

Joel Spolsky recounts the technological history of his blog, from Dave Winer's Manila platform in 1999 through his own CityDesk product to its final migration to WordPress. CityDesk was built on the bet that people would prefer desktop WYSIWYG blogging on Windows, which proved wrong as web-based platforms won out. The VB 6.0 codebase gradually stopped working on modern Windows, forcing Joel to maintain a Windows XP virtual machine just to publish. After years of persuasion from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, Joel finally migrated the site, crediting a team of developers who preserved 16 years of content and over 1000 links.

Oh look, a new site!

Joel Spolsky announces that he has migrated his blog 'Joel on Software' to WordPress. The entire post consists of a single sentence acknowledging the platform change and warning readers about potential bugs. It's a minimal, utilitarian announcement with no substantive discussion.

Introducing HyperDev

Joel Spolsky announces HyperDev, a new product from Fog Creek Software that provides an instant development environment for building full-stack web apps. The product eliminates all setup friction: visiting the URL immediately gives you a running server, an IDE, and a live URL with no accounts, git, hosting, or deployment required. Changes deploy instantly as you type, and real-time collaboration is built in without version control. Spolsky positions HyperDev not as a replacement for professional tools but as a way to remove barriers for simple projects, new programmers, and quick prototyping that would otherwise never get built due to administrative overhead.

Stack Exchange Raises $40m

Joel Spolsky announces Stack Exchange's $40 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. He recounts the company's origin story, from building Stack Overflow in 2008 to fix programmer Q&A, to expanding into 133 community-driven sites across diverse topics. The post emphasizes Stack Exchange's obsessive focus on serving programmers, including building Stack Overflow Careers as a developer-first job board. Spolsky frames the fundraise as necessary to continue investing in growth rather than slowing down to reach profitability, and stresses that investors are chosen to align with the company's mission.

Trello, Inc.

Joel Spolsky announces that Trello has been spun out of Fog Creek Software into its own independent company, Trello Inc., with outside investment from Index Ventures and Spark Capital. He recounts Trello's origin as one of four internal prototype projects in 2011, growing from a two-person team to 4.6 million users over three years. While Fog Creek didn't need outside money, the investment accelerates growth plans for features, sales, and marketing. Spolsky emphasizes that all three companies he's involved with—Fog Creek, Trello, and Stack Exchange—share the same 'operating system' of treating developers well and putting people first.

Victory Lap for Ask Patents

Spolsky celebrates the first successful patent rejection achieved through Ask Patents, a Stack Exchange site where developers submit prior art to block bad software patent applications. He explains three techniques companies use to get weak patents approved: obfuscating language, using non-standard terminology to evade prior art searches, and deliberately overreaching with broad claims. He then walks through his personal experience finding prior art for a Microsoft patent application in about 15 minutes, which led to the USPTO rejecting all twenty claims. He argues that software patents are of uniformly poor quality and remarkably easy to challenge, calling on developers and even competing companies to systematically use Ask Patents to reduce the flood of bad patents.

Free as in Fortune Cookies

Joel Spolsky announces Trello Business Class, the first paid tier for Trello, after nearly two years of offering the product completely free. He explains the monetization strategy: build a free product that helps millions, then charge the 1% of users who derive the most value. The team identified medium-to-large organizations with many active users as the target paying audience and built enterprise features around security, permissions, and user management. Business Class launches at $25/month per organization, while core Trello remains free.

The Patent Protection Racket

Spolsky argues that patent trolls operate a protection racket indistinguishable from organized crime. They buy vague software patents, send threatening letters to small developers, and profit when victims pay up rather than face million-dollar legal costs. He condemns the practice of paying trolls as complicit and calls on developers to band together through organizations like the EFF, Stack Exchange's Ask Patents, and the Application Developers Alliance to fight back and reform the patent system.

Town Car Version Control

Joel Spolsky announces Kiln Harmony, a major new version of Fog Creek's distributed version control system that lets developers use either Git or Mercurial interchangeably on the same repository. He argues that DVCS is the most important developer tool advancement of the decade and explains why commercial products like Kiln and GitHub add value on top of raw open-source tools. He positions Kiln as serving the corporate market (code reviews, access control) while GitHub serves open source (social networking, forking). The key technical achievement is that Kiln stores repos in both formats with perfect bidirectional translation, letting teams migrate gradually or mix tools freely.

Software Inventory

Spolsky draws an analogy between manufacturing inventory and software development, arguing that accumulated work-in-progress — feature backlogs, bug databases, and undeployed features — represents costly inventory that slows teams down. He identifies three key accumulation points where software 'inventory' piles up and provides concrete suggestions for constraining each. The post argues that excessive backlogs waste time on features that will never ship, bloated bug databases divert effort from the product itself, and undeployed features forfeit competitive advantage. He connects this thinking to the origin of Trello, which was designed to make inventory visible and discourage accumulation. The core message is that lean principles from manufacturing apply directly to software teams, and constraining inventory at every stage is essential for shipping faster.

Trello at UserVoice

Joel Spolsky shares a brief link to UserVoice founder Richard White's detailed account of how UserVoice uses Trello throughout their development process. The post serves as a promotional mention for Trello, which was built by Spolsky's company Fog Creek Software. It contains no original analysis or argument, functioning purely as a signal boost for a third-party endorsement of Trello.

The Management Team

Joel Spolsky criticizes young startup founders who emulate Steve Jobs' abrasive personality traits, mistaking correlation for causation. He argues that Jobs' difficult temperament wasn't the source of his design genius, and that copying his worst qualities is misguided. The post is a brief, pointed observation about the cargo-cult mentality in Silicon Valley's startup culture.

New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

Joel Spolsky announces the creation of The Academy for Software Engineering, New York City's first public high school dedicated to training students in software development. The school, spearheaded by CS teacher Mike Zamansky and backed by VC Fred Wilson, will accept any interested ninth grader regardless of grades. Spolsky argues this is crucial because the US education system is failing to produce enough programmers to meet industry demand, and the existing pipeline draws from too narrow a demographic pool. He emphasizes that the school will maintain rigorous academics while not being a traditional vocational school.

How Trello is different

Joel Spolsky explains how Trello differs from Fog Creek's previous products by being a horizontal tool rather than vertical software aimed at developers. Drawing on his experience at Microsoft where he discovered most Excel users just made tables rather than doing calculations, he argues that great horizontal applications succeed by providing useful data structures — and Trello provides a 'list of lists.' He also outlines Trello's strategy: continuous delivery, public development, free pricing to maximize adoption, API-first architecture, and cutting-edge technology to attract developers.

Should you launch at a conference?

Joel Spolsky evaluates whether startups should launch products at tech conferences like TechCrunch Disrupt, Launch, or Demo. He examines the two main promises—VC exposure and press coverage—and finds both require significant qualification. VC introductions only help if your company is already fundable, and press coverage requires proactive outreach rather than passive hope. Drawing from launching Trello at Disrupt, he argues that a polished product combined with pre-briefed journalists can generate massive viral traction. He also makes a case against lean startup incrementalism, advocating for building something genuinely good before exposing it to 131,000 eyeballs. The overlooked benefit of conference launches, he concludes, is the hard deadline and morale boost they give your team.

Announcing Trello

Joel Spolsky announces Trello, a new product born from Fog Creek Software's effort to keep employees motivated by creating small teams to launch new products. The idea originated from Joel's frustration with never knowing what his team was working on. An early concept called 'Five Things' limited everyone to exactly five tasks, but evolved into Trello. Built by a small team following lean startup principles, Trello was dogfooded from just 700 lines of code and quickly proved to be an incredibly useful collaboration tool.

Stack Overflow DevDays is Back!

Joel Spolsky announces the return of Stack Overflow DevDays, a developer conference series focused on hands-on coding tutorials of emerging technologies. The conferences are expanding to four cities across three continents, with two-day formats instead of one. The format emphasizes live coding over slides, covering technologies like DVCS, HTML5, Node.js, and Hadoop. An update notes the events were ultimately cancelled before they took place.

NY State Passes Marriage Equality Act

This is an extremely brief post where Joel Spolsky acknowledges the passage of New York State's Marriage Equality Act in June 2011. The post contains no substantive text beyond the title, serving as a simple marker of the event. It represents a rare instance of Joel using his software-focused blog to note a political and social milestone. The lack of commentary suggests he viewed the headline as speaking for itself.

Modern community building

Joel Spolsky discusses Stack Exchange's approach to growing its network of 51 online communities, arguing that algorithmic approaches alone fail at community building. He observes that each community has unique needs requiring human judgment rather than one-size-fits-all software solutions. To address the challenge of scaling community cultivation, he announces plans to build a team of 'super-evangelists' who will learn community-building skills through intensive daily training. The post doubles as a job listing for this new community evangelism team.

Help us organize the next Stack Overflow conference

Joel Spolsky announces planning for the next series of Stack Overflow DevDays conferences scheduled for fall 2011. The two-day conferences focus on providing intensive introductions to emerging technologies that developers want to learn. He references the original DevDays format of high-bandwidth sessions on topics like iPhone development, Python, and jQuery. For the 2011 edition, the team is crowdsourcing topic suggestions from the community, with early interest in DVCS, HTML5, and Node.js.

Lunch

Joel Spolsky argues that eating lunch together as a team is critically important for workplace culture and shouldn't be left to chance. He observes that even at companies with cafeterias like Google and Microsoft, many employees end up eating alone, which he sees as a failure. Drawing a parallel to the social dynamics of school cafeterias, he contends that communal meals are fundamental to human connection. At Fog Creek and Stack Exchange, he deliberately designed the lunch experience with long shared tables and expectations that newcomers join the group.

The podcast is back!

Joel Spolsky announces the return of the podcast he co-hosts with Jeff Atwood, formerly the Stack Overflow Podcast, now rebranded as the Stack Exchange Podcast. The post provides links to subscribe via iTunes, SoundCloud, or the Stack Exchange Blog. He credits Alex Miller as the new producer and promises technical improvements to come.

Stack Overflow (the company) is now Stack Exchange

Joel Spolsky briefly announces that the company formerly known as Stack Overflow has been renamed to Stack Exchange. The post is essentially a teaser that directs readers to the Stack Overflow blog for the full explanation. It includes a photo of the snack room at the newly-named Stack Exchange office. The post is minimal in content, serving more as a pointer than a standalone article.

Careers 2.0 (by Stack Overflow)

Spolsky announces the launch of Careers 2.0 by Stack Overflow, framing it as a generational shift in how programmers find jobs. He satirizes the traditional hiring process with its resumes, recruiters, and whiteboard interviews as an outdated ritual that fails to assess actual programming ability. The post positions Careers 2.0 as the modern replacement for this broken system.

Does your employer own your side projects?

Joel Spolsky addresses the common question of whether employers own software created by programmers in their spare time. He notes widespread misinformation on the topic and frames employment at a tech company as a decision to sell one's intellectual output. The post is essentially a brief pointer to his longer answer on answers.onstartups.com, where he elaborates on intellectual property rights for employee side projects.

FogBugz/Kiln Demo

This is a brief announcement post directing readers to a YouTube video of Joel Spolsky's FogBugz/Kiln world tour presentation. The post contains virtually no substantive content beyond the link and a tip about viewing quality. It serves purely as a promotional notice for Fog Creek Software's product demo tour.

Stack Overflow 2010 recap

Joel Spolsky recaps Stack Overflow's 2010 growth, highlighting the company's expansion from 7 million to 16.6 million monthly visitors, raising $6 million in venture capital, and growing from 3 to 27 employees. He emphasizes the launch of Stack Exchange as a network of 33 Q&A sites beyond programming, and touts the platform's high answer rates as its key differentiator. The post also covers the company's new New York office and development team accomplishments. It's essentially a celebratory year-in-review that doubles as a vision statement for Stack Exchange's expansion into new subject areas.

The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions

This is an extremely brief post that serves as a pointer to a longer article on the Stack Overflow blog. Joel highlights the problem of recurring questions on Stack Overflow and directs readers to a post about how the platform handles frequently asked 'long tail' programming questions. The post itself contains essentially no original content beyond a single quoted sentence and a link.

Stack Exchange for Jewish Life and Learning

Joel Spolsky draws a playful parallel between the Stack Exchange Q&A format and the structure of the Talmud, arguing that Stack Exchange is a natural platform for questions about Jewish observance. He notes that the Talmud similarly presents a question followed by multiple ranked answers. The post serves as a brief promotion for a proposed Jewish Life and Learning Stack Exchange site.

World Tour – last chance

Joel promotes the FogBugz World Tour 2010, noting that unexpected demand led them to secure larger venues in some cities. The free event features demos of FogBugz 8.0 and Kiln 2.0, plus a one-hour introduction to distributed version control. He encourages last-minute signups and reassures waitlisted attendees that cancellations typically open spots.

WebApps.stackexchange.com nothingtoinstall.com now live!

Joel announces the launch of the first Stack Exchange site to complete the community creation process and exit beta. The site, initially called nothingtoinstall.com, focuses on helping users with web application questions. He provides example questions covering common web app tasks like emailing large files, deleting Facebook accounts, and backing up WordPress blogs. The post includes an update noting the site was quickly renamed to webapps.stackexchange.com because the original name was unpopular.

FogBugz and Kiln (coming soon to a city near you)

Joel Spolsky announces major new releases of FogBugz 8.0 and Kiln, Fog Creek's bug tracking and version control products. He credits the team and ten summer interns for the upgrades. To promote the releases, he announces a 20-city world tour featuring live demos and a free one-hour course on distributed version control. The post serves as a brief promotional announcement encouraging readers to sign up quickly before events fill up.

New, PNG-based Stack Overflow flair

This is an extremely brief announcement post about Stack Overflow introducing new PNG-based flair (user profile badges/widgets that can be embedded on other sites). The post has essentially no substantive content beyond the title, serving as a simple product update notification. It reflects the later period of Joel's blog where posts became shorter announcements rather than the long-form essays he was known for.

Merging Season

Joel Spolsky briefly flags a growing problem with Stack Exchange's Area 51 site-proposal platform: an explosion of overly niche, overlapping, and redundant community proposals. He points readers to a longer discussion on the Stack Overflow blog about how the team plans to address this by merging similar proposals. The post serves as a redirect rather than a full essay, signaling that community fragmentation was becoming a real operational concern for the Stack Exchange network.

Fork it!

This is an extremely brief post that simply links to a Stack Overflow Blog entry about forking in the Unix community. Joel references Freud's concept of 'the narcissism of minor differences' to explain why the Unix world loves to take sides and fork projects. The post is essentially a pointer to content published on the Stack Overflow blog rather than a standalone essay.

A new WordPress Stack Exchange

Spolsky addresses the apparent redundancy of launching new Stack Exchange sites that cover topics already served by existing communities, using WordPress as a case study. He argues that there's no rule requiring only one Q&A site per topic, and that Stack Exchange's technology provides a fundamentally better experience than traditional forums. The post highlights specific advantages like voting, reputation systems, wiki-style editing, and lower barriers to participation. He predicts these features will eventually become standard everywhere, but until then Stack Exchange will continue expanding.

Simplicity vs. Choice

Joel Spolsky briefly muses that a viable business model might be to take 37signals' deliberately simple products and create more complex, feature-rich versions of them. The post is essentially a teaser for a conference talk he gave at the Business of Software conference, where he presumably explored the tension between simplicity and feature complexity in more depth. He also promotes his upcoming appearance at the next year's conference.

The growing empire of Stack Exchange

Joel briefly announces the launch of three new Stack Exchange community sites: Gaming, Cooking, and Pro Webmasters. He teases three more launches the following week. The post is essentially a short promotional update with no substantive argument or analysis.

Domain Names

In this very brief post, Joel Spolsky explains the decision to give each Stack Exchange site its own unique domain name and brand identity rather than using generic Stack Exchange subdomains. He argues that individually-branded sites feel more authentic and trustworthy to their communities. The post links out to a longer explanation on the Stack Overflow blog.

Web Applications Stack Exchange now in beta

Joel announces the launch of Web Applications Stack Exchange, a new Q&A site for web app questions like exporting Gmail or deleting Facebook accounts. It's the first site created through the community-driven Area 51 process, where proposed sites must demonstrate they can reach critical mass before being approved. The post is essentially a brief promotional announcement for the expanding Stack Exchange network.

Don Norman at the Business of Software 2009

Joel shares a video of Don Norman speaking at the Business of Software 2009 conference. He highlights Norman's memorable example about a two-button remote control for PowerPoint presentations, where half the audience presses up and half presses down to advance slides, yet everyone believes their choice is obvious. Joel uses this as a brief plug for the upcoming Business of Software 2010 conference.

Area 51 is now in beta

Joel announces that Area 51, the community-driven platform for proposing new Stack Exchange sites, has entered beta. He addresses a Hacker News commenter's criticism that the site seems overly complicated and questions its business model. Joel humorously deflects the business model question with a Saturday Night Live reference. He draws a parallel to early skeptics of Stack Overflow itself, who predicted it wouldn't last a year, and notes that Area 51 is intentionally designed for committed users rather than casual visitors.

My secret weapon for setting executive compensation

Joel Spolsky briefly recommends a resource for setting executive compensation in tech companies. His friend Noam at Harvard Business School conducts annual surveys of executive compensation. The surveys help founders benchmark pay and equity for executive roles. The data can be purchased for $999 or accessed free by participating in the survey.

Paul Kenny’s talk at the Business of Software 2009

Joel Spolsky briefly introduces Paul Kenny, a sales training expert who regularly speaks at the Business of Software conference. He notes that both Red Gate and Fog Creek Software hire Kenny to train their sales teams. The post primarily serves to share a video of Kenny's 2009 conference talk and promote the upcoming 2010 Business of Software conference in Boston.

News

Joel announces the release of FogBugz 7.3, describing it as a significant update despite its incremental version number. The post is a straightforward product announcement listing new features including case editing, bulk email reply, resizable UI, IMAP support, and faster backlog editing. It serves primarily as a marketing update for Fog Creek's bug tracking product.

Kathy Sierra’s talk at the Business of Software 2009

Joel Spolsky shares his enthusiasm for Kathy Sierra's talk at the Business of Software 2009 conference. He notes that Sierra made fun of Stack Overflow's VC-backed business model during her presentation, including a reference to the site's unicorn meme. The post is essentially a brief recommendation to watch her talk, with a plug for the upcoming Business of Software conference.

News

This ultra-brief post announces Stack Overflow's Series A venture capital financing. Joel links to the official announcement on the Stack Overflow blog with a single quote explaining the reasoning: they decided to make the product free and find VC funding to support it. The post marks a significant turning point for Stack Overflow's business model and growth trajectory.

Note from Taco

This is an ultra-short humorous post written from the perspective of Joel's dog Taco, thanking TechSmith for sending pet photos and toys including an iPhone. It's essentially a playful thank-you note that serves as lighthearted filler content on the blog. The post has no substantive technical or business content.

Sites for experts

Spolsky explains the philosophy behind Stack Exchange 2.0's expansion into new Q&A communities. He argues that successful Q&A sites must target experts and professionals, not casual enthusiasts. The key insight is that expert-focused sites naturally attract enthusiasts, but enthusiast-focused sites fail to attract experts. He uses proposed Firearms and Law sites as examples, noting that easy questions have already been answered elsewhere, while millions of hard, long-tail questions remain unserved. The core mission is making the internet better for expert answers, not duplicating what Yahoo Answers already offers.

Stack Exchange 2.0

Joel announces major changes to Stack Exchange, pivoting from a paid white-label hosted product to a free, community-driven platform. The original Stack Exchange model let anyone create a Q&A site, but didn't produce enough high-quality sites. The new model makes Stack Exchange free, introduces a democratic community process for creating new sites, and places all content under Creative Commons licensing rather than private ownership.

The Design of Design

This is an extremely brief post announcing the release of a new book by Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man Month. Joel simply links to 'The Design of Design' on Amazon. There is no analysis, review, or commentary — just a book announcement. The post consists of only 19 words of original content.

Distributed Version Control is here to stay, baby

Joel Spolsky publicly reverses his earlier dismissal of distributed version control systems, admitting he was wrong on a podcast where he criticized DVCS. After his team at Fog Creek switched to Mercurial and built a product (Kiln) around it, he studied the technology deeply and came to understand that the key insight isn't the 'distributed' part but that DVCS thinks in terms of changes rather than versions. This mental model shift makes branching and merging vastly easier, which he calls possibly the biggest advance in software development technology in a decade. He urges Subversion users to switch immediately and links to his Mercurial tutorial, HgInit. The post also serves as his farewell essay on Joel on Software.

Puppy!

Joel Spolsky announces his retirement from traditional blogging on the 10-year anniversary of Joel on Software. He reflects on his experience writing for Inc. magazine, where editorial rewrites made pieces feel unlike his own voice. He declares the opinionated tech essay genre—Hacker News fodder—has become boring to him personally, though he acknowledges it remains a valid format for others. He calls for a shift from recycled conventional wisdom toward more objective, measurable knowledge that fills in the 'long tail' rather than repeating the same ideas. He also announces ending the StackOverflow podcast's current format, closing the Joel on Software discussion group, and sharply curtailing speaking engagements.

Facebook / LinkedIn importers

Joel briefly announces a new feature on Stack Overflow Careers that allows users to import their job and education history from LinkedIn or Facebook. The feature was built by developer Kevin Montrose, whose Stack Overflow reputation score Joel highlights. The post serves as a short product update rather than an essay.

Raising money for StackOverflow

Joel Spolsky explains why Stack Overflow is seeking venture capital despite his long-standing advocacy for bootstrapped, organic growth. He revisits his earlier framework of 'Ben and Jerry's' vs 'Amazon' style companies, acknowledging that while Fog Creek thrived as the former, Stack Overflow's situation is fundamentally different. He lays out six indicators that a company should take VC (land grab opportunity, proven repeatable concept, publicity value, investor expertise, big exit potential, founders willing to cede control) and seven counter-indicators. He concludes that Stack Overflow, with 6 million monthly uniques and ambitions to change how everyone gets answers online, is one of those rare companies where VC genuinely makes sense.

Headcount

Spolsky reflects on how the optimal ratio of developers to sales/marketing staff changes as a software company matures. In the early days, hiring salespeople is wasteful because the product isn't good enough to sell. But as product quality improves, sales and marketing efforts multiply in effectiveness, eventually leading mature software companies to employ far more salespeople than developers. He uses a simple mathematical model where revenue equals quality times reach to explain why this ratio shifts, and argues this also explains why offshoring development yields minimal cost advantage for product companies.

Why testers?

Spolsky argues that testers serve a critical role by providing immediate feedback to programmers, drawing an analogy to dog training where quick reinforcement is essential for learning. He contends that testers should not simply be failed programmers or automation script writers, but smart, methodical people who evaluate software holistically. The post pushes back against the trend of making testers write automated test suites, arguing this crowds out their real job of evaluating code and providing both positive and negative feedback. Spolsky concludes that testing is an underappreciated career path that suits people who love software but don't necessarily love programming.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy

Joel Spolsky briefly recommends Steve Krug's new book 'Rocket Surgery Made Easy,' a follow-up to the usability classic 'Don't Make Me Think.' He describes it as a concise and fun guide to running simple hallway usability tests. The post serves as a short book endorsement rather than a detailed review. Spolsky highlights the book's practical focus on improving software and website usability through lightweight testing methods.

A little less conversation

Joel argues that as companies grow and employees specialize, managers often misdiagnose their communication problems. They think they need more coordination and alignment meetings, when the real issue is that too many people are inserting themselves into decisions that already have capable owners. The post is a brief pointer to his Inc. magazine column expanding on this idea.

Secret language

Spolsky mocks a Microsoft job posting filled with incomprehensible internal jargon and acronyms, arguing it reveals how insular the company has become. He notes the irony that Microsoft needs a team to compete against open-source alternatives, yet can't even communicate clearly with the outside world. He draws a parallel to IBM's notorious habit of using proprietary terminology for common concepts, which Microsoft itself used to ridicule. The core problem isn't that technical people speak in jargon—it's that even Microsoft's marketing people have become unintelligible and don't realize it.

Let’s stop talking about “backups”

Spolsky argues that the industry's focus on 'backups' sets the bar too low for data protection. He contends that having backups is meaningless if you can't actually restore from them. Through several real-world failure scenarios, he demonstrates how backups can fail silently at restore time. He proposes reframing the conversation entirely: instead of asking whether you have backups, ask whether you've successfully performed a restore.

Stack stats

Joel Spolsky shares statistics about Stack Overflow's growth and its relationship to Stack Overflow Careers. He notes that higher-reputation users are disproportionately likely to submit CVs, which validates the platform's pitch to employers. Stack Overflow has reached 6 million monthly unique visitors, making it arguably the largest programming site in the world. Despite this scale, the site struggles to attract major advertising deals because it refuses to run animated or aggressive ad formats, a trade-off Joel embraces as worth the lost revenue.

When and how to micromanage

Joel Spolsky reflects on the limits of hands-off management, noting that while it works well with trusted internal teams of smart, dedicated people, it fails when working with outside vendors. He and his co-founder Ryan discovered this during a trip, prompting them to reconsider when micromanagement is actually appropriate. The post serves as a teaser for his full Inc. magazine column on the topic.

Programmer search engine

Joel Spolsky announces the employer side of Stack Overflow Careers, a programmer search engine he's long wished for. He argues that the core hiring problem isn't evaluating programmers but finding them in the first place. The platform lets employers search for candidates by skill, location, and relocation willingness, with Stack Overflow reputation as a signal of programming ability. He acknowledges the chicken-and-egg challenge of building a two-sided marketplace and notes that early beta employers have already found promising candidates. The post serves as both a product launch announcement and a demonstration of the search functionality's practical value.

Upgrade your career

Joel Spolsky announces Stack Overflow Careers, a job platform that inverts the traditional hiring model by letting employers browse developer CVs rather than having developers search job listings. He motivates the launch by observing that at DevDays conferences, only 25% of elite programmers report being truly satisfied with their jobs, which he considers unacceptable given how productive top developers are. The platform ties into Stack Overflow profiles so developers can demonstrate their skills through community contributions rather than traditional resumes. Joel argues that software hiring should work like Hollywood talent scouting, not like union hiring halls, because developers are not interchangeable.

Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death?

This is a brief teaser post directing readers to Joel Spolsky's Inc. magazine column about the challenges of growing a sales team. Joel admits that despite his expertise in hiring programmers, he has struggled to build out the sales side of his business. The post hints at a broader discussion about whether slow company growth is a fatal problem. The self-deprecating humor suggests the Inc. column explores the tension between technical founders' comfort with engineering hiring versus their discomfort with sales hiring.

Figuring out what your company is all about

Joel Spolsky describes Fog Creek Software's nine-year journey to articulate its mission, inspired by Kathy Sierra's framework of 'help your users be awesome at something.' He recounts how the company started with the goal of being a great workplace for developers in New York City, but eventually realized that everything they did successfully—the blog, Stack Overflow, FogBugz, conferences—had one common thread: helping software developers make better software. This clarity of mission helped explain past failures (CityDesk flopped because it wasn't for developers) and guided future product decisions like adding source control and code review to FogBugz.

Adam Bosworth on standards

Joel Spolsky shares a brief link post pointing readers to Adam Bosworth's writing about standards design. He highlights Bosworth's core principle that successful standards prioritize simplicity over complexity. Joel endorses the linked piece as 'required reading,' signaling strong agreement with the argument. The post is essentially a curated recommendation rather than an original essay.

Capstone projects and time management

Spolsky argues that computer science programs fail to teach practical software development skills like version control, teamwork, and project management. He highlights UCOSP, a consortium of Canadian universities organizing cross-university capstone projects on open source software. He then diagnoses why student projects consistently fail to deliver useful results: students have 16 years of experience procrastinating and no experience with long-term team schedules. The solution, he argues, is weekly deadlines and milestones, since long-term deadlines without short-term checkpoints are rarely met — a problem that affects professional programmers just as much as students.

Countdown challenge

Joel announces a simple programming challenge for the Stack Overflow community: create a full-screen countdown timer application for use during StackOverflow DevDays conference intermissions. The app needs to display on the main screen to warn attendees when sessions are about to resume. He frames it as both a practical need for keeping the packed conference schedule on time and as a way to showcase the community's programming talent. The contest is hosted on Meta Stack Overflow.

Upcoming startup workshop in San Francisco

Joel Spolsky announces a half-day startup workshop attached to the Business of Software 2009 conference in San Francisco. The workshop features small-group sessions moderated by successful software founders including Red Gate's Neil Davidson and Simon Galbraith, Fog Creek's Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor, and HubSpot's Dharmesh Shah. The format is informal, focused on Q&A and problem-solving for early-stage software founders. The event concludes with a live taping of Jason Calacanis's 'This Week in Startups' podcast. While the workshop itself is free, attendees must register for the main conference.

New startup incubator in Cambridge, England

Joel announces that Red Gate Software has launched a startup incubator in Cambridge, England, offering free office space, internet, room, board, advice, and pocket money. Unlike typical incubators, Red Gate isn't taking equity in the companies it helps. Joel is one of the advisors involved. The incubator's philosophy is based on building relationships with smart people, with the belief that long-term benefits will naturally follow.

Seth Godin at the Business of Software Conference

Joel Spolsky promotes Seth Godin's keynote from the 2008 Business of Software conference, highlighting Godin's insight that mass-market advertising leads to mediocre products. He emphasizes Godin's reputation as a transformative speaker whose seminars command premium prices and sell out instantly. The post shares a link to watch the full hour-long talk online.

EBS 2.0

This is a very brief announcement post where Joel links to Brett Kiefer's article about Evidence Based Scheduling 2.0 on the FogBugz blog. The update adds support for strict dependencies and start dates to FogBugz's scheduling system. Joel quotes a humorous example using Back to the Future references to illustrate the dependency feature. The post is essentially a product update pointer with no substantive argument.

The Day My Industry Died

This is a very brief teaser post directing readers to Joel's Inc. magazine column where he retells the early story of Fog Creek Software. The post opens with a satirical quote mocking dot-com era optimism about how every industry would be disrupted and startups would make everyone rich. The column apparently covers the founding narrative of Fog Creek during a turbulent period for the software industry. The post itself is too short to contain a full argument, serving primarily as a pointer to the longer Inc. piece.

Web Startup Success Guide

This is a brief promotional post where Joel Spolsky congratulates Bob Walsh on publishing his book 'Web Startup Success Guide,' for which Joel wrote the foreword. He also highlights an interview with David Allen (GTD Guru) that appears as chapter 8 of the book and is available to read online. The post is essentially a book recommendation and signal boost for a colleague's work.

Fruity treats, customization, and supersonics: FogBugz 7 is here

Joel announces the release of FogBugz 7, describing how the team recovered from a disorganized development process by resetting plans and writing a focused vision statement in August 2008. The vision centered on three pillars: 'fruity treats' (small customer-requested improvements), customization (a plugin architecture), and 'supersonics' (performance improvements via .NET/Mono). The team used Evidence Based Scheduling to ship on time within one year. Joel credits the team rather than himself and highlights how a concise, shared vision statement made prioritization easy by defining what was out of scope as much as what was in.

Why Wolfram Alpha fails

Joel Spolsky shares a brief post linking to Mencius Moldbug's analysis of why Wolfram Alpha fails as a product. The core argument, conveyed entirely through the quoted passage, is that users cannot form accurate mental models of what Wolfram Alpha can and cannot do. Because the system is built on a million lines of constantly changing code, users' attempts to predict its capabilities are inherently inadequate and error-prone. Joel lets the quote speak for itself without additional commentary.

The eternal optimism of the Clear mind

Joel Spolsky examines the failure of Clear, an airport security line-skipping service that paid for expensive background checks even after the TSA refused to let pre-screened travelers bypass security screening. Clear's original business model was to let vetted travelers skip security entirely, but when that proved impossible, they kept doing costly background checks for a service that only let people cut in line. Spolsky argues this was organizational dysfunction — the inability to adapt a business model to changed circumstances. He notes the irony that Clear might have been profitable if they had simply dropped the unnecessary background checks.

Conferences in New York

Joel Spolsky explains why New York City is not included in the StackOverflow DevDays conference tour. The two main reasons are prohibitively high costs for venues, catering, and hotels, and surprisingly low attendance from New York's tech community. He cites specific examples like $23 per person just for a coffee break and hotel rooms at $600-700 per night. Despite New York having a large software development community, Joel notes that turnout for tech events there has consistently disappointed compared to other cities.

StackOverflow DevDays: Five New Cities

Joel Spolsky announces the expansion of Stack Overflow DevDays from five cities to ten due to overwhelming demand. The initial five-city event sold out quickly with over 2,388 registrations, including 800+ in London alone. New cities added include Boston, Austin, Los Angeles, Cambridge UK, and Amsterdam. The post details the schedule, pricing, and speaker lineup including Joel himself, Jeff Atwood, Scott Hanselman, and Jon Skeet, covering topics like Android, Python, iPhone development, and jQuery.

Server Fault now in public beta

Joel Spolsky announces the public beta launch of Server Fault, a Q&A site for system administrators built on the same engine as Stack Overflow. He explains that while Stack Overflow was designed specifically for programmers, the underlying Q&A platform with voting, editing, and tagging was clearly applicable to other fields. System administration was chosen as the first expansion because programmers frequently do sysadmin work themselves, and the domain is full of obscure, hard-to-discover solutions that benefit from community knowledge sharing.

Stack Overflow DevDays

Joel announces Stack Overflow DevDays, a series of one-day developer conferences in multiple cities priced at just $99. With Stack Overflow reaching 3.5 million monthly visitors in six months, the events aim to bring the online community together in person. Each city gets six speakers covering diverse topics from iPhone development to ASP.NET MVC to Python, deliberately crossing technology tribal lines. Joel partnered with Ryan Carson's Carsonified to keep costs radically low during the recession, when traditional $1500 conferences were being cancelled. The events sold out across all initial cities, prompting expansion from five to ten locations.

Talk about StackOverflow

This is an extremely brief post consisting of a single sentence linking to a video of Joel Spolsky's talk at Google about Stack Overflow. The post serves purely as a pointer to external content rather than containing any substantive argument or analysis. No details about the talk's content, themes, or takeaways are provided in the post itself. It functions as a simple announcement for his audience.

The Business of Software 2009 speaker lineup

Joel Spolsky announces the speaker lineup for the Business of Software 2009 conference. He opens with an anecdote about seeing Kathy Sierra speak at Webstock in New Zealand and being blown away. He then lists the impressive roster including Geoffrey Moore, Don Norman, Paul Graham, Heidi Roizen, and others, emphasizing that every speaker is worth attending on their own. The post is essentially a promotional piece for the conference, positioning it as a uniquely high-quality, single-track event.

Win32 programmer needed

This is a brief job posting rather than a traditional blog post. Joel Spolsky announces that Fog Creek Software is actively seeking an experienced Win32 C/C++ developer to work on their Copilot product. The post leverages Joel's blog audience as a recruiting channel, appealing directly to skilled systems programmers.

Fog Creek Compensation System

Joel Spolsky briefly announces that he has published a description of Fog Creek Software's compensation system for Inc. magazine. He also shares the Fog Creek professional ladder, which determines employee levels and base salaries. The post itself is essentially a pointer to two external resources rather than a substantive essay.

Solid State Disks

Joel Spolsky describes his experiment with replacing traditional hard drives with Intel X25-M solid state drives to speed up developer productivity. After a developer requested weeks of engineering time to parallelize their compiler, Joel decided to try throwing money at the problem first. The SSDs dramatically improved boot times and application launching, but failed to improve the 30-second compile time since the compiler was CPU-bound rather than IO-bound. He concludes the SSD upgrades were still worthwhile for overall snappiness but acknowledges they'll still need to invest developer time in parallelizing the compiler.

Stack Overflow Live!

Joel Spolsky announces a live recording of the Stack Overflow podcast at Microsoft's MIX 09 conference in Las Vegas. He and Jeff Atwood will record the podcast in front of a live audience at The Venetian. The post is a brief event announcement with logistical details including date, time, and location. Attendees need conference registration but not workshop registration.

How to be a program manager

Joel Spolsky explains the role of program manager, tracing its origin from Charles Simonyi's failed überprogrammer concept to Jabe Blumenthal's reinvention at Microsoft as a user advocate who designs UIs, writes functional specs, and coordinates teams. Drawing on his own experience as a program manager on Excel's VBA feature, Spolsky argues that the role's power comes from the creative tension between program managers and developers as peers — neither side should have authority over the other. He defends functional specifications against agile critics, arguing that iterating on a written spec is far cheaper than iterating on code. The post concludes that companies' number one mistake is letting the manager of programmers also design the product, eliminating the healthy debate that produces better designs.

Start-up Static

This is a very brief blog post that serves as a teaser for Joel Spolsky's Inc. magazine column called 'Start-up Static.' The post consists almost entirely of a humorous quote describing the cocky phase of startup founders, where early success goes to their heads. It links out to the full column for the complete article.

Fog Creek Professional Ladder

Joel Spolsky publishes Fog Creek Software's professional ladder, a transparent framework for determining base salaries based on three dimensions: experience, scope, and skills. Experience counts years of relevant full-time work but explicitly excludes school and penalizes repetitive tasks. Scope measures the breadth of responsibility from intern to multi-project owner. Skills measure capability independent of current role, from supervised beginner to someone critical to shipping world-class products. The final level combines all three using a formula that averages scope and skills, then cross-references with experience.

Is the tech recession over?

Spolsky shares a single data point from Fog Creek's sales figures suggesting the tech recession may be easing. FogBugz and Copilot sales dropped 20% during October-December 2008 but bounced back to pre-recession levels starting January 5, 2009. He notes the Joel on Software job board is down from its peak but still showing healthy activity. He acknowledges this could be a fluke and invites readers to share their own experiences.

The New York Times covers the Fog Creek office

Joel Spolsky shares a New York Times feature covering Fog Creek Software's new office space. The brief post highlights the NYT's recognition that Spolsky, despite being a software designer rather than an architect, demonstrated genuine design knowledge in creating the office. Spolsky links to additional resources including his own detailed write-up and a 49-picture slideshow for readers wanting more details about the space.

New, faster Copilot

Joel describes Fog Creek's experiment with Akamai's IP Application Accelerator service to improve the performance of Copilot, their remote desktop product. He was initially skeptical that routing packets through Akamai's network could meaningfully improve speed for a real-time application that can't use caching. After testing, they found roughly 100% throughput improvement on cross-country connections and noticeably better usability. A particularly impressive test from a hotel in Munich with terrible internet showed Copilot performing better than the hotel's native connectivity, suggesting Akamai's network routing around poor infrastructure genuinely works.

From Podcast 38

Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood discuss the diminishing returns of strict unit testing and overly rigid object-oriented design principles like SOLID. Joel argues that 100% unit test coverage creates a maintenance burden that grows disproportionately as codebases evolve, since design changes routinely break a constant percentage of tests. He also criticizes the SOLID principles, particularly Interface Segregation and Single Responsibility, as bureaucratic over-engineering that produces millions of tiny classes nobody needs. Both conclude that what ultimately matters is delivering value to customers quickly, and that dogmatic adherence to any methodology can become counterproductive friction.

I am not having any problems with Google

Joel Spolsky responds to a factually incorrect news story by journalist Paul Boutin in the Industry Standard, which falsely attributed an anonymous forum comment to Spolsky himself. Spolsky clarifies he does not use Google Apps and did not write the comment in question. He identifies three contributing factors: his discussion forum's visual similarity to his main blog, anonymous posting capabilities, and declining standards in tech journalism. He announces that anonymous posting will be disabled immediately.

Purchase orders and custom licenses

Joel Spolsky points to a discussion about large companies that demand custom legal agreements for small software purchases. He highlights the absurdity of bureaucratic procurement processes that cost far more in legal overhead than the software itself. The core argument is that companies obsessive about contracts are the least likely to pirate software, making elaborate legal protections pointless for small purchases.

Open House

Joel Spolsky announces an open house event at Fog Creek Software's new office in New York City. After sharing photos of the new office online, many people expressed interest in visiting. The open house is scheduled for January 30th with free food and drinks. The post is a brief logistical announcement with the office address and time constraints.

Thanks or No Thanks

This very brief post links to Joel Spolsky's Inc. magazine column about recognizing employee contributions. The core idea is that visible, direct contributions to revenue don't necessarily represent more value than indirect contributions from other team members. Spolsky challenges the common tendency to disproportionately reward or credit the person whose work most visibly translates into money. The post argues for a more equitable understanding of how value is created in teams.

Open-plan offices make workers sick

Joel Spolsky shares a brief link to research from Australian scientists showing that open-plan offices lead to lower productivity and higher worker stress. The post reinforces his long-held position that private offices are essential for knowledge workers. By citing scientific research, he adds empirical weight to arguments he has made repeatedly throughout his blog's history. The brevity of the post suggests he views the finding as self-evident validation of his stance.

“By installing Java, you will be able to experience the power of Java”

Joel Spolsky critiques the Java installer's dialog box for filling space with meaningless, repetitive text that mentions 'Java' six times without explaining what it actually does. He argues that just because there's room on a dialog box doesn't mean you need to fill it. Referencing his earlier writing that people don't like to read, he suggests the entire dialog could be replaced with a humorous one-liner without any loss in functionality.

Goals

Joel Spolsky shares Fog Creek Software's goals for 2009, inspired by a Seth Godin post about the importance of having goals. He lists six concrete company objectives including shipping FogBugz 7.0, launching a new product built by summer interns, and putting on the Business of Software conference. The post is notably brief and action-oriented, treating goal-setting as a straightforward exercise rather than overthinking it.

Copilot OneClick for Macintosh

Joel announces the release of Copilot OneClick for Macintosh, a feature that lets users preinstall remote support software on frequently accessed computers for one-click connections. The post explains that Fog Creek Copilot is a simple, inexpensive remote desktop tool used for tech support, helpdesks, and even coding interviews. The new OneClick feature eliminates the need to set up a connection each time, and now works cross-platform between Windows and Mac. Joel highlights the product's ease of use, security, and low price point.

Animoto

Joel briefly reviews Animoto, a web service that automatically creates video presentations from uploaded photos and music. He praises its simplicity, particularly how easily it imports photos from popular sharing services. He notes the pricing tiers and mentions that rendering times are slow enough to discourage iterative tweaking.

Another resume tip

Joel Spolsky advises software developers applying to startups to emphasize hands-on coding experience over management credentials. He argues that startup CTOs immediately dismiss resumes filled with management buzzwords like 'architected,' 'optimized business processes,' and 'managed team of 25.' Instead, candidates should highlight concrete individual coding accomplishments. Spolsky notes that the VP and middle-management roles candidates aspire to simply don't exist at small companies, where the only things that matter are writing code and calling customers. He suspects many candidates overstate their management experience while understating their coding contributions, which backfires when applying to startups.

The new Fog Creek office

Joel Spolsky describes Fog Creek Software's move to a new, larger office at 55 Broadway in New York City after outgrowing their previous 'Bionic Office.' The company invested roughly half a million dollars beyond the landlord's construction to create an ideal workspace for software developers, featuring private offices for every developer, motorized standing desks, Herman Miller Aeron chairs, and numerous amenities. Spolsky reiterates his philosophy that private offices with doors are essential for developer productivity, preventing the interruptions endemic to open plans and cubicle farms. The post serves as both a showcase of the new space and a practical argument that investing heavily in developer workspace pays dividends through increased productivity and stronger recruiting.

Stack Overflow is a Wiki

Joel Spolsky addresses early criticism of Stack Overflow by drawing a parallel to Wikipedia's early days. Critics who point out wrong answers are making the same mistake journalists made when criticizing Wikipedia articles that were already fixed by the time their columns went to print. He emphasizes that Stack Overflow is fundamentally a wiki where content improves over time through voting and editing. With 81% of traffic coming from search engines, the real value is in long-term answer quality, not initial responses.

From the Department of Badly Chosen Defaults

Joel highlights a CSS fix shared by a Flickr developer that improves image scaling quality in Internet Explorer. The fix requires adding a non-standard CSS property to enable bicubic interpolation for image resizing. Joel points out that every other browser already uses bicubic interpolation by default, making IE's choice of a lower-quality default an obvious mistake. He uses this as a small example of poor default choices in software.

Future of Web Apps

This is a brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky mentions he will be speaking at the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami in February 2009. He invites readers to suggest topics for his talk via email. The post contains no substantive argument or analysis, serving purely as a event notification to his audience.

Snowy day in New York

Joel describes debugging CSS rendering issues on his redesigned blog, particularly with IE6's unpredictable behavior. He details fixing RSS feed display problems by inlining styles, and notes that image pixelation issues are caused by IE's poor image scaling compared to Firefox and Safari. The post is a casual, lighthearted update mixing technical gripes with office culture.

A new design

This is an extremely brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky introduces a redesign of his 'Joel on Software' blog. The entire post consists of a single sentence linking to a separate, more detailed explanation of the redesign rationale. There is no substantive argument or analysis contained in the post itself, which totals only 7 words of actual content beyond the metadata.

Amnesia

Joel recounts discovering that a timesheet reporting feature he opposed was being built for FogBugz 7, only to find video evidence that he had previously approved it himself. He explains his belief that timesheet-based performance tracking leads to falsified data and undermines statistical ship-date predictions. The post becomes a self-deprecating confession about being the kind of boss who approves things vaguely and then objects when he sees the details. He concludes that his team should stop listening to him because they've thought more deeply about their features than he has.

Stack Overflow Podcast #32

This is a brief announcement post directing readers to Stack Overflow Podcast #32. Joel mentions the episode covers software piracy, site performance improvements, handling criticism, and programmer office spaces. The post contains virtually no substantive content beyond linking to the podcast episode. It serves purely as a cross-promotion notice on Joel's blog.

My Style of Servant Leadership

This is a very brief blog post that serves as a teaser for Joel Spolsky's Inc. magazine column on servant leadership. Joel shares a vivid quote describing a military sergeant major who ruled through fear, inspections, and impossibly high standards—implicitly contrasting this authoritarian style with his own approach to leadership. The post uses the military anecdote as a foil to set up his argument for servant leadership in the full column.

Exploding Offer Season

Spolsky warns college students about 'exploding offers' — a pressure tactic where companies impose artificially tight deadlines to prevent candidates from interviewing elsewhere. He explains that second-rate companies use this technique because they know they can't compete for top talent in a fair comparison. The post provides a three-step strategy: schedule interviews close together, push back on deadlines, and if necessary accept verbally while continuing to interview. Spolsky argues that unethical recruiters exploit students' high ethical standards and inexperience to lock them into suboptimal positions.

Stack Overflow Podcast #30

This is a minimal announcement post directing readers to Stack Overflow Podcast episode 30, featuring Richard White of UserVoice as a guest. The post contains virtually no substantive content beyond the link itself.

Stack Overflow Podcast #29

This is a minimal stub post linking to Stack Overflow Podcast #29, where Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood discuss video games, programming languages not in English, and hiring great programmers. The post contains essentially no substantive content beyond a brief description of the podcast topics. It serves purely as a promotional pointer to the podcast episode hosted on the Stack Overflow blog.

Stack Overflow Podcast #28

This is a very brief, lighthearted post promoting Stack Overflow Podcast #28. Joel shares a humorous review by a listener named Corey who noted Joel's conversational dominance over co-host Jeff Atwood. Joel playfully taunts Jeff and acknowledges he hasn't been blogging as much because the podcast has become his primary content outlet. He teases the episode's discussion topics with a cryptic reference to colors like Azure and Orange.

The Unproven Path

This is a brief teaser post directing readers to Joel's Inc. magazine column called 'The Unproven Path.' The post hints that Joel deliberately violated seven of his own long-held principles about business and software engineering, and was surprised to find that nothing bad resulted. It suggests a reflective examination of whether established best practices are truly necessary or merely comfortable assumptions.

Stack Overflow Podcast #27

This is a brief podcast announcement post for Stack Overflow Podcast #27, featuring Reddit founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian as guests. Joel also shares a technical warning about Microsoft SQL Server 2008's full text search being significantly slower than the 2005 version due to a new architecture. The post serves primarily as a pointer to the podcast episode and a cautionary note for developers considering a database upgrade.

Stack Overflow Podcast #26

This is a minimal announcement post for Stack Overflow Podcast episode 26, where Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood answer listener questions. The post contains virtually no substantive content beyond a link to the podcast episode. It serves purely as a cross-posting notification on Joel's blog to direct readers to the Stack Overflow blog where the full podcast notes reside.

Sins of Commissions

This brief post teases Joel's Inc. magazine column about the perverse effects of commission-based sales incentives. Using the example of a shoe store cashier pushing useless silicone spray, Joel sets up an argument about how commission structures lead to bad customer experiences. His father adds a parallel to education policy, noting that measurable incentives like No Child Left Behind create similar distortions.

How the StackOverflow Podcast is produced

Joel Spolsky details the technical evolution of the Stack Overflow podcast's recording setup, from low-quality phone recordings through Skype with Pamela to a professional hardware-based studio configuration. The post walks through the specific equipment used — a Sennheiser headset, DJ mixer, Fostex recorder, and M-Audio USB preamps — and explains how they're wired together to record his voice locally while keeping the Skype conversation separate. He describes the post-production workflow using Audacity and The Levelator for volume normalization. Joel acknowledges the setup is an over-engineered hardware kludge that could theoretically be done in software, but he couldn't get the software solutions to work despite trying.

Stack Overflow Podcast #25

Joel Spolsky announces Stack Overflow Podcast episode 25, featuring guest Steve Yegge. The episode covers working at Google, marketing ideas, and programming languages. Joel notes the episode ran long in homage to Yegge's famously lengthy blog posts. He also describes fixing persistent Skype audio quality issues with new podcasting equipment.

Stack Overflow Podcast #24

This is a very brief announcement post directing readers to Stack Overflow Podcast #24, where the full Stack Overflow team gathered at Fog Creek's New York City office for a roundtable discussion about the future of StackOverflow.com. The post is essentially a pointer to the podcast episode hosted on the Stack Overflow blog. Joel closes with a Rosh Hashanah greeting in Hebrew.

Imaginary product

Spolsky proposes a simple but practical product idea: a desk-mountable power strip that combines electrical outlets, a network hub, and a USB hub in one unit. He notes that an existing product by Mockett comes close but requires users to hardwire their own ports rather than offering built-in connectivity. The core frustration is having to crawl under desks to plug in laptops and peripherals.

Password management finally possible

Joel presents a simple three-step system for managing passwords across multiple computers using Dropbox and PasswordSafe. The approach combines Dropbox's file synchronization with an encrypted password file that works across Windows, Mac, and Linux. He argues this setup is secure, free, and practical because it doesn't expose passwords to any internet site while generating unique, random passwords for every account. The post is notably a product of its era, predating modern cloud-based password managers.

Stack Overflow Podcast #21

This is a very brief announcement post for Episode 21 of the Stack Overflow podcast. Joel mentions that he and Jeff Atwood discussed how to handle abusive users in online communities. He uses a chess analogy to describe users who disrupt the intended purpose of a platform. The post also notes that Stack Overflow was about to launch publicly the following Monday.

We’re finally moving!

Joel Spolsky announces that Fog Creek Software is finally moving into their new office space after over a year of planning and construction since March 2007. The new office is twice as large, in a better neighborhood, and features premium amenities including adjustable-height desks, aquariums, and a marble-lined shower. He notes the frustrating delays typical of office build-outs, including moveable walls from Haworth that won't arrive until six weeks after move-in. The post is a brief, lighthearted update teasing more details to come.

StackOverflow Podcast #20

Joel Spolsky recaps StackOverflow Podcast episode 20, highlighting a deadlock bug caused by a third-party library that delayed the public beta launch. He uses this as evidence for his long-held skepticism of third-party dependencies and references the Excel team's decision to build their own compiler. The post also thanks attendees of the Business of Software conference and humorously solicits sponsors for the podcast.

How I Learned to Love Middle Managers

This is a brief teaser post directing readers to Joel's Inc. magazine column about the value of middle managers. The post includes a quote about employee unhappiness and complaints affecting productivity, suggesting the column explores how Joel came to appreciate the role middle managers play in organizations. The framing implies Joel initially held the common programmer-culture skepticism toward middle management before changing his view.

A review of the Nokia E71

Joel Spolsky reviews the Nokia E71 as a serious alternative to the iPhone 3G, having picked one up from Nokia's Fifth Avenue boutique after growing frustrated with iPhone availability and early bug reports. He finds the E71 excels in build quality, keyboard, call quality, and battery life, while acknowledging the iPhone's superior screen and simpler app experience. He details his specific use cases—MP3 playback, Exchange sync, and tethered internet—finding the E71 adequate with third-party software filling gaps in Nokia's built-in apps. He concludes that while the iPhone pushed the state of the art, the game isn't over for competitors, and the E71 is the best phone he's ever owned.

StackOverflow Podcast #18

Joel briefly updates listeners about StackOverflow Podcast episode 18, his first conversation with Jeff Atwood since the beta launched. He expresses genuine enthusiasm about the beta's performance, noting it exceeds his highest expectations. The hybrid system combining wiki, Q&A, discussion, and Reddit-like features effectively surfaces the best answers. He highlights that the ability to edit questions and answers creates a continuous improvement loop.

Good System, Bad System

This is a brief teaser post promoting Joel Spolsky's Inc. magazine article titled 'Good System, Bad System.' The post opens with a vivid, humorous observation about the density of Starbucks locations on his walk to work in midtown Manhattan, using it as a hook to draw readers to the full article. It also promotes his second book, 'More Joel on Software.' The actual substance of the argument about good vs. bad systems is in the linked Inc. article, not in this post itself.

Pecha Kucha

Joel announces the adoption of the Pecha Kucha presentation format for the Business of Software conference. The format strictly limits speakers to 20 slides at 20 seconds each, totaling exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds. He explains how the rigid constraints force speakers to rehearse carefully, edit ruthlessly, and deliver polished presentations. Eight finalists were selected from 45 applicants to present in this format alongside the main speaker lineup.

Annual Fog Creek Open House

Joel Spolsky announces Fog Creek Software's annual open house event, scheduled for July 17, 2008 at their Manhattan office. He notes that they normally decline tour requests because they prioritize giving programmers quiet working conditions. The company is about a month away from moving to a larger downtown space but chose to hold the event at the old office anyway. Visitors will get to meet interns, MBA program participants, sales staff, and developers working on FogBugz, Copilot, and Wasabi.

Don’t hide or disable menu items

Spolsky argues against the common practice of disabling menu items when they can't be used. He contends that disabled menu items leave users confused and helpless, unable to figure out what they need to do to enable the functionality. Instead, he recommends keeping menu items enabled and showing an explanatory message when the action can't be completed, giving users actionable information.

Desks

Joel describes the process of selecting desks for Fog Creek's new office. Starting from ergonomic principles—feet flat on the floor, arms horizontal while typing—he explains why they chose motorized height-adjustable desks. They settled on the Details adjusTables Series 7 with custom Steelcase desk surfaces featuring a knife-edge profile for a sleeker appearance.

Adventures in Office Space

This is a very brief teaser post directing readers to Joel's column in Inc. Magazine about Fog Creek Software's search for office space. The post highlights the frustration of a failed real estate deal with dry humor, noting that a floor they wanted to expand into turned out not to be available. It also promotes the upcoming Business of Software conference with an early registration reminder.

Stack Overflow Podcast #2

Joel announces the second episode of the Stack Overflow podcast with Jeff Atwood, covering logistics and listener engagement. The episode discussed the rationale for doing a podcast, addressed listener questions, and featured a debate about whether programmers should learn C. Joel outlines improvements including RSS subscription support, a community wiki for transcripts, and plans to improve audio quality via Skype. The post is primarily administrative, directing listeners to subscribe and contribute.

First Joel on Software conference

Joel Spolsky announces the first-ever Joel on Software conference, 'Business of Software 2008,' to be held in Boston in September. The post serves as a promotional announcement listing nine speakers from across the software and business world, including Seth Godin, Richard Stallman, Jason Fried, Jessica Livingston, and Spolsky himself. He highlights Boston as an ideal September destination with perfect weather and cultural attractions. The tone is light and promotional, with Spolsky's characteristic self-deprecating humor on display in his own speaker bio.

Fire and motion, small business edition

This is a very brief teaser post promoting Joel's April column in Inc. Magazine. It opens with a colorful anecdote about parachuting from a plane, referencing his military experience. Joel promises this will be the last time he tells 'shaggy dog stories' about his army days. The post is essentially a plug for his Inc. Magazine column with minimal standalone content.

Martian Headsets

Spolsky examines the IE8 team's dilemma over whether to default to strict web standards mode or maintain backward compatibility with IE7's rendering behavior. He frames this as an instance of a universal tension between idealists who want strict standards compliance and pragmatists who prioritize not breaking existing websites. Through an extended analogy about Martian headphone jacks, he explains how markets evolve from one-to-one to many-to-many relationships, making backward compatibility increasingly painful but necessary. He argues there is genuinely no right answer: idealists are correct in principle that strict standards would improve the web, but pragmatists are correct that shipping a browser that breaks half the internet is suicidal. He predicts the IE team will ultimately revert to pragmatic backward compatibility despite publicly championing standards.

Marketing internships with Seth Godin

Joel Spolsky briefly announces that while Fog Creek's summer internships are filled, his marketing mentor Seth Godin is offering paid marketing internships. The internships focus on creative projects using digital tools like online video, blogs, copywriting, and design. Joel emphasizes that these are substantive roles with no menial work involved.

Some interesting jobs

Joel Spolsky announces three new job openings at Fog Creek Software, using the occasion to articulate his hiring philosophy and company culture. He describes positions for a junior system administrator, a Linux guru, and a Windows internals expert, each with detailed explanations of why the role exists and what makes it interesting. Spolsky addresses the tension between wanting experienced hires and giving smart people a chance to learn, particularly in system administration. He also tackles the apparent contradiction of a small company hiring more people, arguing that The Mythical Man-Month's lessons are more nuanced than 'small teams always win.' The post doubles as both a job listing and a window into how Fog Creek thinks about team growth, emphasizing that they add people only where it won't slow things down.

Pressed uniforms, mid-winter tans, and morale

This is a very brief teaser post directing readers to Joel's monthly Inc. magazine column. The core advice is about not imposing startup-era frugality on your successful employees. Joel argues that as a company grows, you should let star performers travel and work in comfort rather than forcing the scrappy cost-cutting that founders endured in the early days. The implication is that penny-pinching on employee perks damages morale and retention.

Inspired Misfires

This is an extremely brief blog post that serves as a teaser for Joel Spolsky's February column in Inc. Magazine. The post contains virtually no content beyond a single quote about bureaucratic inertia, referencing Newton's first law of motion as a metaphor. The full argument and context exist in the linked Inc. Magazine column rather than in the blog post itself.

Speakers for Business of Software Conference

Joel Spolsky shares a brief announcement about the upcoming Business of Software Conference. He links to Neil Davidson's preliminary speaker list, which includes Joel himself alongside notable figures like Richard Stallman, Jason Fried, and Eric Sink. The post is essentially a quick promotional note with no substantive argument or analysis.

Some corrections

Joel Spolsky corrects numerous factual errors in a wire service article that mischaracterized his comments about Microsoft's interoperability announcement. The journalist incorrectly claimed Spolsky had 'failed' to build a remote desktop product over 10 years ago, when in fact Fog Creek Copilot was a profitable, actively-developed product less than three years old. Spolsky clarifies that Copilot uses the open VNC protocol, not Microsoft's Remote Desktop protocol, and that Microsoft's announcement had no bearing on Copilot's development. He does agree with the broader point that Microsoft's protocol disclosure could benefit the ecosystem by enabling third-party competition in areas like remote desktop clients.

Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? (And some workarounds)

Joel Spolsky explains why Microsoft Office binary file formats are extraordinarily complex, arguing that this complexity isn't the result of deliberate obfuscation or bad programming. The formats were designed for performance on 1990s hardware, relied on Windows libraries, weren't built for interoperability, and had to represent every feature accumulated over decades of development. He uses the '1904' date epoch record in Excel as a case study showing how even the simplest format detail requires deep historical context to implement correctly. He concludes that the released specs won't meaningfully help competitors, and offers practical workarounds: using Office's COM automation to let Office do the heavy lifting, or writing to simpler formats like CSV, RTF, or HTML that Office can still open.

Going to Tokyo

This is a brief travel announcement where Joel Spolsky lets readers know he is heading to Tokyo for the Shoeisha Developers Summit. The post contains no substantive argument or analysis — it is purely logistical. It reflects the casual, personal blogging style common in the mid-2000s where authors would share travel plans with their audience.

TripIt is awesome

Joel Spolsky enthusiastically recommends TripIt.com, a travel organization service that works by simply forwarding travel confirmation emails. The service automatically parses booking details from airlines, hotels, and car rental agencies to create organized itineraries with maps, weather, and confirmation numbers. Joel contrasts this with the tedious manual process of entering travel data into a calendar, which requires multiple fields and is error-prone. He holds up TripIt as an exemplar of what he calls the 'Figure It Out' school of UI design, where the software handles complexity instead of burdening the user.

:CueCat is back!

Spolsky draws a parallel between Google's new 2D barcode initiative for print ads and the failed :CueCat barcode scanner from the dot-com era. He acknowledges that technology has changed since his original dismissal — people now have camera phones with web browsers — but argues the fundamental problems remain: typing URLs isn't hard, the chicken-and-egg problem persists, and consumers won't install special software for marginal benefit. He frames it as a generational tension between experienced elders who remember past failures and enthusiastic youngsters who think they've invented something new.

Microsoft can’t speak straight any more

Joel criticizes Microsoft's corporate communication style, specifically their announcement about SQL Server 2008 delays. Instead of simply saying the product would be late, Microsoft issued a jargon-filled statement full of meaningless phrases like 'feature complete CTP during the Heroes Happen Here launch wave.' Joel argues the announcement is deliberately obfuscatory and calls on the author to just be honest. He notes that nobody would have been upset by a straightforward delay announcement since SQL Server 2005 works fine.

Five whys

Joel Spolsky recounts a 3 AM network outage at Fog Creek's data center caused by a switch left in auto-negotiate mode, and uses it to explore why traditional SLAs are statistically meaningless for measuring reliability. He argues that internet outages are 'black swan' events — rare, unpredictable outliers that defy normal statistical analysis. Rather than chasing expensive ultra-high uptime guarantees, he advocates for finding a 'sweet spot' where all expected failures are handled. Fog Creek adopted Toyota's 'Five Whys' root-cause analysis method, which revealed the real issue was a missing checklist for production configurations. Instead of an SLA, they launched a public status blog documenting outages, post-mortems, and preventive actions as a continuous improvement process.

This year’s Business of Software conference

Joel Spolsky announces his co-sponsorship of the Business of Software 2008 conference, organized by Neil Davidson of Red Gate Software. He praises the previous year's edition in Cambridge, England as the best conference he attended, highlighting its strong speaker lineup and lack of filler content. The 2008 edition will be rebranded as 'Business of Software 2008: A Joel on Software Conference' and is tentatively planned for Boston in the fall. The post is essentially a brief endorsement and promotional announcement.

Undergraduate programming

Spolsky argues that Computer Science education has declined by adopting Java and dumbing down curricula, failing to attract students passionate about programming rather than theory. He proposes creating a BFA-style undergraduate program focused on software development as a craft, modeled after art schools like Juilliard. The program would combine practical studio work building real software with experienced industry practitioners as teachers, supplemented by liberal arts courses. He points to programs like Waterloo and Rose-Hulman as early examples of this approach succeeding where traditional CS departments struggle to attract students. He also laments that universities once produced important software (Unix, X Window, AFS) but no longer do.

Voting machine bugs

Joel shares a brief excerpt from Clive Thompson's New York Times piece about voting machine bugs. The post highlights a specific Diebold voting machine defect where machines running Windows CE would crash every few hundred ballots. The root cause was that voters accidentally dragging their finger while tapping 'cast vote' triggered an unanticipated drag-and-drop event. The programmers had never accounted for this OS-level behavior, leaving the machine unable to cope. Joel presents this without commentary, letting the absurdity speak for itself.

Getting Lookout to run on Outlook 2007 again

Joel Spolsky vents his frustration with Microsoft Outlook 2007's built-in search functionality, which he finds slow, inaccurate, and inferior to the third-party add-in Lookout that it replaced. He recounts how Microsoft acquired the small company behind Lookout, discarded the technology, and then shipped a worse search feature in Outlook 2007 that also disabled Lookout. Joel shares his relief at finding instructions from Lookout's original author to get the add-in working again on Outlook 2007, restoring near-instant search speeds.

Travel Tips

This is an extremely brief post that simply links to an Inc.com article where Joel shared travel tips from his World Tour. The post promises advice on avoiding air travel problems and details about equipment used. There is essentially no substantive content in the blog post itself, as it serves purely as a pointer to external content.

Where there’s muck, there’s brass

Spolsky argues that profitable businesses are built by solving difficult, unpleasant problems that competitors avoid. Using the analogy of factory work where every job has its 'gnarly problem,' he explains why FogBugz offers installable software despite the pain of supporting diverse customer environments. He responds to 37signals' Jason Fried, who prefers hosted-only software, by noting that FogBugz's installable option generates five times the sales. Spolsky contends that many startups feel insubstantial because they avoid solving hard problems, while acknowledging that great design itself is a legitimate gnarly problem to solve. He concludes that business growth comes from progressively solving more gnarly problems, with each solution amplifying the others.

Talk at Yale: Part 3 of 3

In this final part of his Yale talk, Spolsky recounts founding Fog Creek Software out of frustration with how programmers were treated at other companies, and reflects on the most valuable skills he gained from his CS education. He describes starting Joel on Software as a writing platform that grew to reach hundreds of thousands of readers. He credits a gut-level writing course (CS115 Algorithmic Thinking) taught by Roger Schank as the most useful class he took, arguing that clear technical writing is what separates leaders from individual contributors. He concludes that CS degrees don't teach software development, but may build useful mental muscles.

Talk at Yale: Part 2 of 3

Joel Spolsky recounts his career journey from Microsoft to Viacom to Juno Online Services, using each experience to illustrate lessons about where programmers should work. He argues passionately against in-house software development, where programmers are cost centers producing 'good enough' software with no incentive to improve it. He contrasts this with product companies where better software directly drives revenue and programmers are valued accordingly. He also critiques command-and-control management styles where inexperienced managers override technical experts, advocating instead for the Silicon Valley model where managers exist to clear obstacles for talented people.

Talk at Yale: Part 1 of 3

Joel Spolsky recounts his experiences at Yale's CS department and connects them to broader lessons about software quality. He describes how a frustrating Dynamic Logic class convinced him to abandon graduate school, which he considers one of his best decisions. This leads to his central argument: programmers habitually redefine problems to be algorithmically solvable, discarding the aspects that matter most to users. He argues that automated approaches to software quality can only verify narrow technical correctness, while ignoring aesthetics, usability, and polish. He uses Windows Vista as a cautionary tale of automated testing replacing human judgment. The talk also touches on the Unix vs. Windows cultural divide and how it maps onto academic hierarchies.

How walkable is your neighborhood?

Joel shares a walkability scoring website created by his friend Mike Mathieu. He compares the walkability scores of Microsoft's campus (31), Google's campus (34), and Fog Creek's New York City office (98 out of 100). The post is a lighthearted plug for Fog Creek's urban office location, concluding with a tongue-in-cheek recruitment pitch.

How to demo software

Joel Spolsky recounts lessons learned from a 26-city demo tour for FogBugz 6.0, covering practical tactics for venue selection, staging, presentation design, and follow-up sales. He discovers the power of social proof when a fellow attendee converts a skeptic more effectively than he could. The post argues that demos should be structured as stories with suspense and resolution, not boring feature lists or PowerPoint slides. He emphasizes continuous improvement through live iteration, treating each demo like a comedian testing material. Joel also distinguishes marketing (creating demand) from sales (fulfilling it), admitting he failed to plan adequate sales follow-up despite the tour's success.

Live from Dublin

This is a brief link-blog post written while Joel is traveling in Dublin. He shares Chris Lomont's reverse-engineering analysis of the 2007 Excel floating point bug, mentions Stefan's series on Wasabi's 'picture functions' feature, and notes that a Dublin meetup room is larger than expected, allowing more attendees.

News

This is a very brief news post with two items: an announcement about Joel speaking at the Irish Java Technology Conference in Dublin, and a link to Stefan's article series about Wasabi, Fog Creek's in-house programming language. The post is mostly notable for the humorous aside about how Wasabi got its name, having been renamed from 'FogBasic' after an internal naming contest. The contest came down to 'Bone Crusher 3000' vs 'Wasabi,' with Wasabi winning despite the appeal of typing 'bc3k' into the command line.

Earthquake!

Joel Spolsky briefly recounts experiencing his first earthquake, a 5.6 magnitude event centered 9 miles away while staying at a hotel. He describes the shaking lasting about 15 seconds and observes lights flashing in a nearby Adobe building. He compares the experience to airplane turbulence.

New websites

Spolsky recounts the experience of being the client for the first time when hiring Happy Cog Studios to redesign the Fog Creek and FogBugz websites. He discovers firsthand why clients are always disappointed with custom development: specs can't reveal everything, and designs deteriorate through committee meddling. After several failed iterations of tweaking designs, he realized the solution was to separate the FogBugz and Fog Creek identities into distinct sites, and to give the designer artistic freedom rather than micromanaging. The post illustrates how iterative delivery and trusting skilled practitioners leads to better outcomes than design-by-committee.

Some feedback on EBS

Joel Spolsky curates positive feedback from prominent tech bloggers about Evidence-Based Scheduling (EBS), the flagship feature of FogBugz 6.0. The post collects endorsements from Jeff Atwood, Rafe Colburn, Scott Rosenberg, and Reg Braithwaite, each highlighting different aspects of the feature. The testimonials praise EBS for improving estimation accuracy, encouraging focus through time tracking, and being a fully shipped product rather than just a concept. Spolsky also links to his earlier article on EBS published in Better Software Magazine.

Evidence Based Scheduling

Joel Spolsky introduces Evidence-Based Scheduling (EBS), a method that uses developers' historical timesheet data to produce probabilistic ship date predictions via Monte Carlo simulation. The system requires breaking tasks into small units (under 16 hours), tracking actual time spent, and computing each developer's velocity history. Rather than producing a single unreliable ship date, EBS generates a confidence distribution curve showing the probability of shipping by any given date. Spolsky argues this approach automatically compensates for developer optimism, interruptions, and individual estimation patterns without requiring obsessive time tracking. He also discusses broader scheduling wisdom: only programmers should estimate their own work, managers shouldn't pressure developers into shorter estimates, and realistic schedules force beneficial feature cuts.

Five easy ways to fail

Joel Spolsky argues that incompetent teams are the primary cause of software project failures, but this truth is systematically hidden in postmortems because people are too polite to blame their colleagues. He points out that across all industries, official failure analyses avoid the uncomfortable reality that the people involved simply weren't skilled enough. The post is a teaser for a longer Inc. Magazine article on five common failure modes.

FogBugz World Tour video now available

Joel announces the availability of a 70-minute video recording of his FogBugz demo from Austin, Texas. He describes the technical setup used by NewTek's crew with their TriCaster portable broadcast studio, which allowed the demo to be streamed live to about 150 viewers. The post details the hosting challenge of a 264 MB Flash video file and how Peer 1 Network's Content Delivery Network was used to distribute it across 17 cities for faster downloads.

Sound Scientist

This is a very brief post where Joel Spolsky shares the background music used in the FogBugz 6.0 launch materials. He credits the song 'Sound Scientist' by a San Diego band named 'bill' and provides a download link for the MP3. The post serves as a quick promotional aside during the FogBugz 6.0 launch campaign.

Introducing FogBugz 6.0

Joel announces the official shipping of FogBugz 6.0, highlighting its major new features including an integrated Wiki, API, overhauled search engine, and Ajax improvements. The centerpiece feature is Evidence-Based Scheduling (EBS), which uses Monte Carlo simulation to generate probability distributions for ship dates rather than single-point estimates. Instead of trusting developer estimates at face value, EBS looks at historical accuracy of each developer's past estimates to simulate multiple possible futures. The post doubles as a product announcement and a sales pitch with introductory pricing.

Atlanta!

Joel recaps a speaking event at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta where about 110 people attended and asked great questions. He highlights meeting long-time Fog Creek community member Terry Kearns in person. He also notes that downtown Atlanta is quiet after 5pm and recommends Yelp as increasingly useful for finding restaurants, having used it to discover a nearby restaurant called Room.

Well, if it hurts, you drive.

Spolsky recounts a frustrating experience at Hertz DFW airport where a computer system failure brought the entire rental operation to a halt. With employees forced to fill out agreements by hand and managers sitting idle, the cascading failure left him stranded in suburban Dallas without transportation. He speculates that the entire outage might have been caused by something as simple as a DOS prompt waiting for a date entry. The post illustrates how over-reliance on automated systems without adequate fallback procedures creates spectacular failures.

Washington

Joel Spolsky provides a brief travel update from his World Tour promoting FogBugz. He reports on a 150-person turnout in Arlington, Virginia, and previews an upcoming live-streamed demo in Austin, Texas. He notes the absurd cost of hotel internet and mentions a minor travel mishap with Delta's automated check-in machines.

Another week…

Joel Spolsky provides a brief travel update for his FogBugz world tour, listing upcoming cities across the US and Europe. He encourages waitlisted readers to sign up, noting they'll likely be accommodated. He mentions that the Austin event will be streamed online using NewTek's TriCaster portable broadcast studio. The post is essentially a logistical announcement with no substantive argument or insight.

Stop the catalogs

Joel highlights the longstanding frustration of trying to stop unwanted paper catalog deliveries, noting that catalog companies historically made it nearly impossible to opt out. He recommends Catalog Choice, a nonprofit service that contacts catalog merchants on your behalf to stop deliveries. He praises both the concept and the implementation of the service, noting its clean Ajax UI and graphic design.

Outsmarting your airline

Spolsky shares a quick travel hack for determining whether a flight will actually be on time. He noticed Continental Airlines' gate display showed an on-time departure, but there was no plane at the gate. By using FlightAware to track the inbound aircraft, he accurately predicted the flight would be 39 minutes late, which proved exactly correct.

Hello from San Francisco?

Joel Spolsky shares a brief travelogue from the FogBugz World Tour stop in San Francisco and the Bay Area. He describes a pleasant weekend driving around Marin County, a well-attended Monday demo with about 110 people, and a tour of Pixar's offices in Emeryville. He notes the contrast between Steve Jobs' messy private office and Pixar's impressive public spaces, and mentions that while many employees get private offices, space constraints mean some work in cubes.

California

Spolsky deconstructs the brilliance of Apple's 'Designed by Apple in California' slogan, explaining how each word triggers deep cultural and emotional associations that make consumers feel good about their purchase. He contrasts this with Microsoft's Zune tagline 'Hello from Seattle,' which he argues demonstrates a complete failure to understand the cultural codes that make Apple's branding work. The post uses this comparison to illustrate how branding success comes from understanding deep emotional resonance, not from superficial imitation. He closes with a promotional plug for his FogBugz World Tour stops across California.

Explaining the Excel Bug

Joel Spolsky explains a bug in Excel 2007 where multiplying 77.1 by 850 displays 100,000 instead of 65,535, drawing on his experience as a former Excel team member. He clarifies that the bug is purely in the display formatting code, not in the actual calculation engine — downstream calculations using the value produce correct results. The root cause involves IEEE 754 floating point representation, where 0.1 has no exact binary representation, causing the product to be extremely close to but not exactly 65,535, which triggers a rare formatting bug affecting only 12 out of all possible floating point numbers. Spolsky argues the bug's real-world impact is negligible but uses it as a springboard to discuss floating point arithmetic, testing limitations, and takes a parting shot at the current Excel team's competence.

Unfocused and Unabashed

Joel Spolsky announces his new monthly column 'How Hard Could It Be?' in Inc. Magazine, focused on the business of software startups. He teases the first installment with a humorous anecdote about the absurdity of trying to print signatures onto already-printed forms, illustrating the kind of mundane operational headaches entrepreneurs face. The post is primarily a brief announcement rather than a substantive essay, serving to direct readers to the full column in Inc. Magazine.

Strategy Letter VI

Spolsky draws parallels between the PC software era of the 1980s and the state of web development in 2007, identifying three recurring dynamics: hardware constraints that developers waste time optimizing for, portability problems across platforms, and the lack of standardized UI conventions. He argues that just as DOS applications were made obsolete by Windows providing a standard SDK, Ajax web applications will eventually be supplanted by a new SDK that provides a portable compiled-to-JavaScript language, standardized UI components, and cross-application interoperability. Using Lotus 1-2-3's loss to Microsoft Excel as a cautionary tale, he warns that dominant web apps like Gmail could become legacy software if they fail to adopt whatever new platform SDK wins developer mindshare.

There’s no place like 127.0.0.1

Joel reflects on returning from a trip and realizing that a web design he had been approving incrementally now looked terrible. He uses Gerald Weinberg's 'sesame seed' parable to explain how incremental small changes can gradually degrade quality without anyone noticing at each step. The design had lost its elegance through rounds of tweaking, pixel-width compromises, and platform rendering differences. Joel decided to scrap the work and start over rather than try to salvage it, acknowledging that sometimes you need to go through the entire process to realize you've built the wrong thing.

Spotted at San Jose Airport

Joel Spolsky briefly promotes the Business of Software 2007 conference, noting that it features exactly the kind of speakers he would invite if he organized his own conference. He mentions Eric Sink and Rick Chapman as examples of people whose insights on the software business he values.

Chicago

Joel Spolsky recounts a FogBugz demo event in Chicago where the choice of a cheap hotel — the Congress Plaza — backfired badly. The hotel was shabby, the staff was on strike forcing attendees to cross a picket line, and the depressing environment likely hurt the perception of the product being presented. He reflects on how the physical environment of a business presentation psychologically colors the audience's impression of the product itself. He also mentions speaking at the Inc. 500 Conference about Fog Creek's hiring practices and promotes his upcoming FogBugz 6.0 launch in New York.

Seattle

Spolsky describes his Seattle demo event and introduces a framework for understanding software development as three distinct phases: design, development, and debugging. Each phase requires fundamentally different scheduling approaches—design is art that's hard to estimate for new projects, development is engineering that can be scheduled precisely with good specs, and debugging is science where prediction is nearly impossible. He argues that skipping the design/spec phase doesn't save time but actually slows you down, since designing on paper is roughly 10x faster than designing in code. The post also promotes FogBugz 6.0's new Evidence-based scheduling feature using Monte Carlo simulation.

Vancouver, BC

Joel Spolsky recaps the first stop of the FogBugz World Tour in Vancouver, where he demoed FogBugz 6.0 to about 120 attendees. The demo hit a snag when Monte Carlo simulations overloaded the laptop's IIS 5.1 server, requiring a restart mid-presentation. Despite the technical hiccup, audience feedback was enthusiastic, with some attendees deciding to purchase FogBugz on the spot. The post also covers practical air travel tips for frequent business travelers, including advice on timing flights, using smaller airports, and leveraging airline loyalty programs to avoid delays.

From the utopia department

In this brief post, Joel Spolsky shares a quote from his interview with ACM Queue comparing small and large companies. He uses a hotel analogy: big companies are like the Bellagio — nice but impersonal — while small companies are like bed and breakfasts, offering a more personal experience with both upsides and downsides. The analogy captures how small companies can be wonderfully intimate or disturbingly eccentric, with no middle ground.

Even the Office 2007 box has a learning curve

Spolsky recounts his frustrating experience trying to open the new Office 2007 retail packaging, using it as a springboard to critique Microsoft's broader redesign philosophy. He argues the packaging violates basic industrial design principles by lacking proper affordances and requiring users to Google how to open it. He extends this critique to Office 2007's ribbon interface, which forces users to relearn tasks they already knew, and condemns Vista as having no redeeming qualities worth the compatibility problems it causes. His recommendation is to stick with Windows XP.

World tour: North America

Joel announces a 21-city North American demo tour for FogBugz 6.0, explaining the business reasoning behind physically visiting cities rather than just posting a video online. He breaks down the surprisingly high costs of business hotel events while noting the per-person cost of $60-70 is actually cheap compared to traditional enterprise sales forces that cost $50,000 per sale. Since FogBugz is priced too low ($21/month) to support a conventional sales team, the demo tour serves as an alternative go-to-market strategy. The events will feature product demos, general software development discussion, Q&A, and overpriced hotel coffee.

Year-end chaos

Joel Spolsky describes the logistical planning for the FogBugz 6.0 World Tour, a 32-city product demo tour spanning North America, Oceania, and Europe. He details the cities planned for both rounds and breaks down the surprisingly high cost of in-person demos versus webinars. Despite the $64 per-attendee cost covering flights, hotels, catering, and swag, he maintains that live demos are worth the investment.

Learning from Dave Winer

Spolsky endorses Dave Winer's philosophy that blog comments are counterproductive to free expression rather than enabling it. He argues that allowing comments beneath posts creates a torrent of anonymous noise, hate speech, and off-topic arguments that degrades the quality of discourse. Using vivid examples from a real estate blog where comments devolved into death threats and geopolitical flame wars, he makes the case that anonymity removes accountability and incentivizes the worst behavior. His proposed solution is that people should express disagreement on their own blogs, where they must take ownership of their words and earn attention through the quality of their ideas.

The universe aligns to prove my point

Joel Spolsky follows up on his earlier post about blog comments by highlighting two thoughtful responses from Clay Shirky and Dave Winer, posted on their own blogs rather than in his comment section. He uses their replies as evidence that distributed conversation across individual blogs produces higher-quality discourse than centralized comment sections. He points to aggregation tools like Techmeme and Bloglines as mechanisms that can reconstruct these distributed conversations automatically. The post serves as a self-reinforcing example of his argument that the best responses come from people with their own platforms and established reputations.

Open house today

Joel Spolsky invites readers to Fog Creek Software's annual open house event in New York City. The brief announcement highlights the company's developer-friendly workplace perks including private offices, large monitors, and premium chairs. He encourages visitors to bring their bosses to demonstrate that such workplace investments are feasible.

Gearing up

Joel Spolsky shares logistics updates for the upcoming FogBugz World Tour, a multi-city product demo event spanning the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Europe. He describes the planning challenges including booking hotel meeting rooms across roughly 20 cities and notes the surprising lack of internet-based booking for hotel event spaces. The post is primarily a gear-shopping request, asking readers for recommendations on projectors, PA systems, and subnotebooks for six weeks of road travel.

Vesting

Joel Spolsky answers two reader questions about software startups. On launch timing, he advises against generating too much early publicity for an underwhelming product (the 'Marimba Phenomenon'), but notes most small startups won't have this problem and should ship early. On equity for a developer co-founder, he recommends standard time-based vesting over 4-7 years rather than milestone-based vesting, and explains why reverse vesting is preferable for tax reasons.

Fog Creek Open House

Joel Spolsky announces Fog Creek Software's annual summer open house event in New York City. The post invites software developers to visit their offices on July 19, 2007 to meet the team, interns, and management trainees. He uses the invitation as an opportunity to subtly showcase Fog Creek's developer-friendly work environment, mentioning private offices, large monitors, and premium chairs.

Why we reimplemented SQL Server Mirroring

Joel Spolsky briefly explains why Fog Creek Software chose to reimplement SQL Server Mirroring rather than use Microsoft's built-in solution. He links to their systems administrator's detailed technical explanation of why the off-the-shelf technology didn't fit their needs. Joel reinforces this with his long-held philosophy that great teams often need to build their own solutions rather than relying on third-party tools. The post is essentially a short endorsement of the 'Not Invented Here' syndrome when practiced by strong engineering teams.

Craftsmanship

Joel Spolsky highlights Maxim Shemanarev's work on font rasterization, sharing a quote that emphasizes how great engineering results come from applying publicly available knowledge with engineering intuition and common sense rather than breakthrough innovations. The brief post serves as a pointer to Shemanarev's detailed technical article, with Joel's single-word reaction ('Wow!') conveying deep admiration for the craftsmanship on display.

Mixed environment

Joel responds to a reader's confusion about Fog Creek's server infrastructure, clarifying that they run a mixed environment with both Linux and Windows servers. Linux handles network services like DNS and routing, while Windows servers run the web front ends (IIS) and database back ends (MS SQL 2005) for FogBugz On Demand. He emphasizes their strategy of standardizing on common hardware to enable easy server swaps and spare parts management.

Announcing FogBugz On Demand

Joel Spolsky announces FogBugz On Demand, a hosted version of their web-based project management tool that was previously only available as a download. He explains that Fog Creek was previously too small to reliably host customer data, but spent the past year building infrastructure including hiring a sysadmin, setting up high-end servers, and establishing two live data centers. The post details their infrastructure decisions, including choosing Windows/SQL Server over LAMP for familiarity despite higher cost, and using Peer 1 Network for both New York and Los Angeles data centers. He describes their warm backup strategy using SQL transaction log shipping between cities, acknowledging it's not instantaneous failover but provides solid disaster recovery.

Announcing the Business of Software Wiki

Joel Spolsky announces a new wiki dedicated to collecting information about the business of software. The post is extremely brief, essentially just linking to the wiki and quoting its mission statement. In a characteristically playful move, Joel demonstrates the wiki's editability by correcting the awkward phrasing of the wiki's own description in real time. The post serves as both an announcement and a live demonstration of how wikis work.

From the “interesting, but ultimately useless facts” department

Joel Spolsky shares a brief, lighthearted note that his book 'Joel on Software' makes a cameo appearance in the horror movie 1408, starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. The post is essentially a fun factoid with no technical content.

Management books

Joel Spolsky reviews three management books, enthusiastically recommending two and panning the third. He praises Robert Townsend's 1970 classic 'Up the Organization' for its still-relevant advice on corporate management, consultants, and marketing. He equally recommends Michael Lopp's 'Managing Humans' for its insightful take on software engineering management and team dynamics. However, he gently but firmly criticizes 19-year-old Ben Casnocha's 'My Start-Up Life' for being thin on substance and padded with platitudes, while acknowledging the author's intelligence and potential.

FogBugz World Tour

Joel announces the upcoming release of FogBugz 6.0 and his plan to do a world tour of live demos. He invites readers to fill out a survey indicating their location so he can decide which cities to visit. The demos will be free, lasting 30-45 minutes with open Q&A about FogBugz and software development in general. He self-deprecatingly notes his inability to learn that travel is miserable.

Web designer wanted

Joel Spolsky posts a brief job listing seeking a freelance web designer in New York City to redesign Fog Creek Software's websites. He specifies requirements including strong XHTML/CSS skills, a portfolio of modern web designs, and some print experience. The post is essentially a classified ad rather than an essay.

fogcreek.de

Joel Spolsky announces the launch of fogcreek.de, Fog Creek Software's first international distributor based in Munich. The site offers full-service sales and support for FogBugz in German. He describes this as a major milestone for the company and encourages German-speaking users in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to reach out to their local contact Branimir.

Font smoothing, anti-aliasing, and sub-pixel rendering

Joel Spolsky examines the fundamental philosophical difference between Apple and Microsoft's approaches to font rendering on screens. Apple prioritizes preserving the typeface designer's intent even if text appears slightly blurry, while Microsoft prioritizes on-screen readability by snapping letters to pixel boundaries even if it distorts the typeface. This difference stems from Apple's desktop publishing heritage versus Microsoft's pragmatic focus on screen reading. Joel argues that user preferences in this debate are largely driven by familiarity rather than objective quality, with each platform's users predictably preferring what they're accustomed to.

Apple Safari for Windows: The world’s slowest web browser

Joel Spolsky criticizes Apple's release of Safari for Windows, noting its extremely slow launch time of 57 seconds compared to 2-3 seconds for competitors. He broadens this into a critique of Apple's pattern of dishonest performance marketing, citing their PowerPC-to-Intel switch and iPhone network speed ads. However, he repeatedly updates the post as Safari's launch time improves with subsequent runs, turning the piece into a humorous self-correction. He ultimately concedes he was wrong about the launch speed while maintaining his broader critique of Apple's marketing dishonesty.

Paying for recruiting trips?

Joel responds to a reader asking whether companies should pay for interview travel expenses. Rather than directly answering, he advises the candidate to batch multiple interviews into a single trip to the UK, minimizing personal cost while maximizing opportunities. He then explains how mentioning competing employers triggers psychological principles of social proof and scarcity, making the candidate appear more desirable and potentially motivating companies to cover travel costs.

A game of inches

Spolsky uses a personal anecdote about tracking down a neighbor's malfunctioning clock radio to illustrate a broader point about software quality. The clock radio's poor UI defaults—resetting its alarm to midnight after a power outage—caused a week of lost sleep, a problem that a single better design decision would have prevented. He connects this to the mindset required in the final debugging phase of software development, where developers become hypercritical and hunt for every small flaw. Quoting Dave Winer, he argues that great commercial software is built by fighting for every inch—thousands of tiny improvements that individually seem insignificant but collectively create a product that feels magical. The post concludes by celebrating the FogBugz 6.0 team's beta release as an example of this inch-by-inch craftsmanship.

Smart and Gets Things Done

Joel Spolsky announces the publication of his book 'Smart and Gets Things Done,' a concise guide to finding and hiring the best technical talent. The book compiles and reorganizes material from his Joel on Software blog articles into a short, readable format of about 180 pages. He highlights the illustrations by Terry Colon as a standout feature and walks through the chapter structure covering topics from finding developers to interviewing to fixing teams. The post is essentially a promotional announcement with Joel's characteristic self-deprecating humor about the book's brevity.

Big company life

Joel Spolsky shares a satirical excerpt from a Meetup recruiting page that parodies Google's famously insular corporate culture. The brief post lets the absurd quote speak for itself, mocking how Big Tech companies create self-contained bubbles where even mundane services like haircuts are branded and elitist. The implication is that this kind of environment is more cult-like than appealing.

Cobranding Copilot

This is a brief product announcement for Fog Creek Copilot, a remote support tool. Joel announces that subscribers can now cobrand the Copilot interface with their own logo. The feature is aimed at tech support providers who want a seamless, branded experience for their clients. The post is essentially a marketing update with no substantive argument or analysis.

Happy Mother’s Day!

This is a brief promotional post tied to Mother's Day 2007. Joel uses the holiday as a hook to remind readers that Copilot (Fog Creek's remote desktop assistance tool) is free for the day. He suggests readers use it to help their mothers switch to Firefox and install security patches remotely. The post is essentially a lighthearted product plug wrapped in a holiday greeting.

Typical Econ 101 management

Joel Spolsky highlights a Best Buy employee's confession about being taught to scam customers into unwanted subscriptions, using it as evidence of a systemic problem he calls 'Econ 101 management.' He argues that major consumer-facing companies rely on crude metrics rather than thoughtful training, which incentivizes frontline workers to deceive customers. The post connects this specific scandal to a broader pattern across American consumer electronics, ISPs, telecoms, and cable companies.

Registered users on the discussion groups

Joel announces a small new feature for the Joel on Software discussion groups: registered user accounts with visual indicators and article favoriting. The feature is built on an early version of FogBugz 6, which they are dogfooding internally before its beta release. The post uses a playful FAQ format to address basic questions about the new accounts. It ends with a teasing reference to a mysterious 'kiwi' mascot.

Fix your mom’s computer for mother’s day

Joel Spolsky makes a brief promotional post tying Mother's Day to a common tech experience: fixing your mom's computer. He suggests removing spyware, installing Firefox, and cleaning up toolbars, then announces that Fog Creek Copilot (their remote desktop product) will be free for the day to make remote tech support easy.

Edinburgh reception

This is a brief logistical announcement about a drinks reception in Edinburgh on May 19, 2007. Joel provides the venue details (Radisson SAS hotel, St. Giles room) and encourages people to sign up. He notes the room can easily accommodate everyone. The post is purely informational with no substantive argument or analysis.

More about elevators

Joel Spolsky continues a discussion about elevator usability, sharing two anecdotes that illustrate how deeply ingrained habits affect user interaction with systems. He describes how users of modern floor-selecting elevators sometimes stand passively in their home building's traditional elevators, expecting the system to already know their destination. He also shares a classic story about solving perceived elevator slowness by installing mirrors rather than speeding up the elevators.

Zagreb / Edinburgh

Joel Spolsky announces an upcoming speaking engagement at Web.Start in Zagreb, Croatia. He also issues a correction and apology for previously referring to the United Kingdom as 'England' in a data analysis post. He explains the mix-up came from their order form dropdown listing, and offers to buy Edinburgh readers a pint when he visits on May 19th.

Guest editorial in Inc.

Joel Spolsky announces a guest editorial he wrote for Inc. magazine about recruiting and internships. He expresses pride at being invited to contribute to a publication he reads cover-to-cover. He humorously notes that professional editing made his writing feel more polished than his usual blog style, and shares a photo of Fog Creek's previous summer interns.

VBA for Macintosh goes away

Joel Spolsky traces the history of VBA from its origins as Excel's macro language through its strategic role as a lock-in mechanism for Microsoft Office. He explains how Microsoft deliberately built VBA and its complex object model as a barrier to entry that competitors couldn't perfectly emulate. The irony, he argues, is that Microsoft's decision to drop VBA from Mac Office 2008 undermines their own lock-in strategy, forcing loyal users to reconsider their platform choices. He draws parallels to the VB6-to-VB.Net transition and the Windows XP-to-Vista upgrade, arguing that Microsoft has abandoned the backwards-compatibility philosophy that made them dominant. Spolsky concludes that breaking your own lock-in features is self-defeating when your business depends on upgrade revenues.

Deriving your demand curve using exchange rate fluctuations

Spolsky describes a clever method for deriving demand curves by exploiting exchange rate fluctuations as a natural price experiment. Since FogBugz is priced in US dollars but sold to UK customers, the falling dollar effectively created varying price points in pounds sterling without deliberate price changes. The data reveals that large customers buying volume licenses are price-insensitive, while small customers exhibit classic downward-sloping demand curves. He acknowledges significant limitations in the data but suggests it as a practical technique for software companies selling internationally.

Outlook 2007: downgrade no longer

Joel recounts the saga of email search in Microsoft Outlook, which was so poor that a third-party tool called Lookout became essential. Microsoft acquired Lookout, removed it from the market, and then Outlook 2007 actively blocked it from running while offering an inferior built-in search powered by Windows Desktop Search. The built-in search was roughly 100 times slower than Lookout had been. A subsequent patch from Microsoft finally improved search performance enough to make Outlook 2007 usable, though still not as fast as the original Lookout.

Moveable walls

Joel Spolsky discusses the financial and practical challenges of building out office space, particularly the tax disadvantage of leasehold improvements which can't be meaningfully deducted. He explains how his company outgrew their current office and faces the prospect of spending millions on construction for a new 15,000 square foot space. He reveals why companies build cubicle farms instead of real walls: office furniture depreciates faster and can be leased, making it tax-deductible. His proposed solution is manufactured, modular wall systems from Haworth that qualify as furniture rather than leasehold improvements while still providing private offices.

Monday Morning Links

This is a brief link roundup post where Joel shares three items: a review calling the Grand Canyon Skywalk a ripoff, a podcast interview he did about customer service and user experience, and a travel anecdote about a miserable experience changing planes at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport via Air France. The post is extremely short and informal, serving more as a personal update than a substantive essay.

Scoble Show

This is a brief Friday link post where Joel Spolsky directs readers to watch his interview on The Scoble Show with Robert Scoble. He offers both a full hour-long version and a 6-minute edited highlights version. The post contains essentially no substantive content beyond the links themselves.

Job listings for India

Joel Spolsky announces the launch of a job board specifically for positions in India, hosted at jobs.joelonsoftware.co.in. He prices job listings at $50 (about 2200 rupees) as an introductory rate to help fill the board. He differentiates his board from major Indian job sites like Monsterindia and Naukri.com by promising fewer but higher-quality applicants, with a money-back guarantee.

Localizing the job board

Joel Spolsky announces plans to expand his job board to serve the Indian market, noting strong readership from India but minimal job postings. Rather than making decisions unilaterally, he crowdsources advice from his readers on localization details including domain naming, pricing, payment methods, and scope. The post is essentially a public product requirements gathering exercise.

Office search continues

Joel documents the challenges of finding office space in New York City that provides both private offices and natural daylight. He explains the geometry problem: the distance from outer windows to the building core determines how many offices can receive light, with roughly 30 feet being the maximum usable depth. Manhattan's building stock is optimized for large open floorplates suited to trading floors and cubicle farms, making private offices with daylight nearly impossible to find.

FogBugz auf Deutsch

Joel announces that FogBugz 5.0.31 now ships with German language support, making it the product's first multi-lingual version. Rather than creating a separate German edition, both languages are built into the default product, with per-user language selection that defaults to browser settings. The team uses a Pig Latin translation step to ensure all strings are localizable before handing them to German translators. Fog Creek has also established sales and support operations in Munich.

Wanted: Tech Writer

Joel Spolsky posts a job listing seeking a technical writer to update the FogBugz project management book for version 6.0. The original author Mike Gunderloy is unavailable, and the revision requires about 40% new content plus refreshed screenshots due to a major UI overhaul. Joel highlights the book's value as both documentation and a software project management introduction. An update notes that Gunderloy ultimately found time to do the revision himself.

Office Space Calculations

Joel Spolsky discusses Fog Creek's need for more office space, sharing the formulas and considerations involved in calculating office space requirements. He breaks down square footage allocations per employee and common areas, explains the difference between carpetable and rentable square footage, and humorously critiques landlord practices around loss factors. He also explores strategies for handling growth during long-term leases, including a novel idea of subletting excess space to software startups as premium programmer-friendly offices.

Chargebacks

Joel Spolsky recounts how he publicly boasted about Fog Creek's 0% chargeback rate, only to receive their first-ever chargeback shortly after. He confirms the rate was literally zero, not rounded. The proof came from custom reconciliation software that screen-scrapes their credit card processor and matches transactions with QuickBooks. When the first chargeback appeared, the software crashed because it had no code path to handle that case. They had to modify the software to accommodate the previously impossible event.

Customer service

This is a very brief teaser post linking to Joel Spolsky's longer article 'Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service.' The post uses a personal anecdote about a frustrating experience with a locksmith to hook the reader into clicking through to the full article. The squiggly-lines-of-anger imagery conveys the emotional state of a dissatisfied customer. The post serves as a promotion for the longer piece rather than containing substantive argument itself.

Seven steps to remarkable customer service

Joel Spolsky outlines seven (plus one bonus) principles for delivering customer service so good that customers remark about it. Drawing from Fog Creek's experience as a bootstrapped company, he argues that fixing problems at their root (not just symptom-level), taking blame gracefully, offering generous refund policies, and hiring highly qualified support staff creates fanatically devoted customers. He uses vivid anecdotes—a locksmith, a diner owner, Lands' End—to illustrate how emotional dynamics in customer interactions matter as much as the technical fix. The core thesis is that investing more upfront in quality support is cheaper long-term than handling the same problems repeatedly with cheap outsourced labor.

The MicroISV Show

This is an extremely brief link post where Joel Spolsky shares that he was interviewed by Bob Walsh and Michael Lehman for The MicroISV Show on Channel 9. The post contains no substantive argument or analysis, serving purely as a pointer to external content. It reflects Joel's practice of cross-promoting his media appearances on his blog.

Copilot 2.0 ships!

Joel announces the release of Fog Creek Copilot 2.0, a remote desktop support tool that requires zero configuration and works through firewalls. The update adds Mac support, a clever direct connect feature that silently upgrades relay connections to peer-to-peer when possible, and file transfer capabilities. The price for day passes was also cut from $10 to $5, with the reasoning that lower friction will drive more users and ultimately more corporate subscriptions. Joel highlights that the product was originally built by four interns in 12 weeks and continues to be developed by two of them who joined full-time.

Some reviews…

Joel shares three positive press reviews of Fog Creek Copilot 2.0's new Mac support. The reviews highlight Copilot's ease of use for remote tech support, particularly for helping non-technical family members. The post serves as a brief product announcement through the lens of external validation, with reviewers praising the zero-configuration approach and the significance of Fog Creek finally supporting Macs.

New version: FogBugz for Visual Studio

Joel announces version 2.1 of the FogBugz Add-in for Visual Studio, which fixes several bugs. The update improves position persistence across sessions and better handles SSL and authenticated installations. He thanks specific community members for their detailed bug reports that helped identify and resolve the issues.

The Big Picture

Spolsky reviews Scott Rosenberg's 'Dreaming in Code,' which chronicles the Chandler project's failure to ship meaningful software despite years of effort and millions of dollars. He uses a brilliant analogy about how human eyes create an illusion of complete vision through rapid page-faulting to explain why software teams overestimate how well they understand their own grand visions. He argues Chandler failed because its design was described in adjectives ('revolutionary') rather than concrete specifics, and because the team hired programmers before doing real design work. Spolsky also critiques the project's key ideas—peer-to-peer sync, 'no silos,' and natural language dates—as either too hard, already done, or fundamentally flawed from a usability perspective.

Dreaming in Code

Spolsky expresses excitement about Scott Rosenberg's forthcoming book 'Dreaming in Code,' which chronicles the troubled development of Chandler, an open-source personal information manager. He praises Rosenberg as the journalist who best understands software development, citing a previous interview experience. Spolsky notes the irony that Chandler was hyped as an 'Outlook killer' in 2003 but four years later had only reached version 0.7alpha4. The post also briefly touches on the ethics of accepting review copies as a blogger.

Explaining Steve Gillmor

Joel Spolsky provides an elaborate, Talmud-style commentary on a blog post by tech pundit Steve Gillmor, annotating every obscure reference and name-drop to make it comprehensible. Spolsky explains Gillmor's criticisms of Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's advocacy for 'thick clients' and Dave Winer's commentary on JSON and web APIs. Through three hours of research and annotation, Spolsky demonstrates that Gillmor's central arguments collapse under scrutiny: Schwartz was actually arguing for Ajax-style rich clients (which Gillmor also favors), and Winer's JSON discussion was a simple misunderstanding he'd already corrected. The post serves as both a public service translation and an implicit critique of punditry that relies on impenetrable insider references and fails to verify its own premises.

Half a million bugs!

Joel Spolsky notes that Fog Creek's internal FogBugz database has passed 500,000 case numbers. He quickly clarifies that the vast majority are spam, faxes, customer emails, to-do items, and other non-bug entries. The actual breakdown reveals only 66,443 real cases, 7,303 fixed bugs, and 909 implemented features. The post serves as a lighthearted showcase of how FogBugz is used as an all-purpose tracking system, not just a bug tracker.

New year’s resolution: get a better job!

Joel Spolsky writes a promotional year-end post encouraging readers to improve their careers in the new year. He highlights three paths: applying for Fog Creek's Management Training Program (which combines work experience with a Columbia Masters degree), browsing interesting job listings on his jobs board, or posting openings if you already work at a great company. The post features a testimonial from a current trainee and lists several compelling companies hiring through the board. It doubles as an advertisement for Fog Creek's jobs board with a discount coupon for employers.

New Stuff!

Joel announces a new Visual Studio add-in for FogBugz that lets developers access their bug tracker from within the IDE. He also introduces the FogBugz API version 1.0, which enables third-party integrations. The API currently supports basic functionality like listing open cases, with more features planned for FogBugz 6.0. He mentions the add-in will eventually become a paid premium feature but is free during its initial launch.

Elegance

Spolsky explores the concept of elegance in software design, drawing from Alain de Botton's comparison of two bridges to argue that the best software accomplishes its task with grace and economy rather than brute force. He connects this to his earlier discussions of choices and simplicity, arguing that software should be invisible to users who are just trying to accomplish real-world goals. Good choices support the user's task directly, while bad choices intrude on what they're actually trying to do. He distinguishes between simplicity as elegance (making powerful features feel effortless) and simplicity as feature reduction, arguing the former is desirable while the latter limits a product's market.

Simplicity

Joel Spolsky argues that simplicity in software is overrated and often misunderstood as a product strategy. He contends that the 80/20 rule fails because everyone uses a different 20% of features, making 'lite' products frustrating for most users. While he acknowledges simplicity works as a bootstrapping strategy for resource-constrained startups, he argues it fails as a long-term approach because competitors can easily clone simple products and users ultimately want more features. He distinguishes between simplicity as usability or aesthetic minimalism (both valid) versus simplicity as deliberately lacking features (a losing strategy), citing his own experience at Fog Creek where new feature releases consistently drove the most revenue growth.

Lego Programming

Spolsky critiques the recurring media narrative that new programming tools will make software development as easy as snapping together Lego bricks. He traces this claim from a 1991 BusinessWeek cover story about object-oriented programming to a 2006 piece by Om Malik about new development platforms, showing how the same promise keeps resurfacing without ever materializing. He contrasts these optimistic predictions with Fred Brooks' 1987 argument in 'No Silver Bullet' that the inherent difficulty of software lies in conceptual design, not in the mechanics of coding. The post implies that journalists consistently misunderstand what makes programming hard.

Using source control tools on huge projects

Joel Spolsky examines how the Windows team at Microsoft organized their source control to manage thousands of developers working on a massive codebase. He shares a Windows engineer's account of how the pre-Longhorn approach of seven shared branches failed to scale, leading to a restructured system of tiered feature branches with quality gates at each merge point. The post argues that this hierarchical branching model, where teams own sub-branches and QA owns the merge points, is the right way to handle source control at scale. Spolsky endorses the pattern of giving developers private branches for frequent check-ins, with code only merging upward when it meets quality bars.

Shutdown in OS X

Joel briefly highlights Arno Gourdol's commentary on the design of the shutdown feature in Mac OS X, specifically the insight that physical actions like closing a laptop lid eliminate the need for software sleep commands. The post is extremely brief, essentially serving as a link to Gourdol's deeper analysis with minimal added commentary. Joel also uses the post to plug remaining copies of the Aardvark'd documentary about Fog Creek internships.

How many Microsofties does it take to implement the Off menu?

Spolsky follows up on his criticism of Windows Vista's shutdown menu by citing insider Moishe Lettvin's revelation that 24 people were involved in implementing that single feature. He uses this as evidence that Microsoft has become hopelessly entangled in bureaucracy, overstaffing, and management layers. He argues that Microsoft's rapid hiring forced them to lower their standards significantly. The irony, he notes, is that Microsoft once looked at IBM's bloated OS/2 team as a cautionary tale, only to become the same kind of bloated monster that takes five years to ship an incoherent product.

Choices = Headaches

Spolsky criticizes Windows Vista's shutdown menu for offering fifteen different ways to turn off a laptop, arguing that excessive choice creates unhappiness rather than satisfaction. Drawing on Barry Schwartz's 'The Paradox of Choice,' he demonstrates how most shutdown options could be merged or eliminated. He walks through a systematic reduction from nine menu options down to a single 'b'bye' button that handles locking, sleeping, hibernating, and powering off intelligently. The post concludes that both Microsoft and the open source movement share a flawed design philosophy of equating more options with better software.

From the “you call this agile?” department

Joel Spolsky critiques a blog post that argues programmers should never be interrupted during their planned iterations, even for urgent customer needs. He agrees that context switching is costly but argues the original post only examines one side of the cost/benefit equation. Spolsky contends that truly agile development should mean the ability to respond to changing priorities, not rigid adherence to two-week plans. He illustrates his point with a real example from Fog Creek, where the Copilot team interrupted their 2.0 development to fix a crash caused by an IE 7 bug. Despite the cost of context switching, fixing the customer-facing crash was the right call. A good manager weighs both the costs of interruption and the costs of inaction.

FogBugz as a help desk application

This is an extremely brief post where Joel shares a testimonial from a user named Kiere who praises FogBugz as a help desk tool. The quoted user reports positive experiences after handling about 100 tickets and 45 knowledge base articles. The post is essentially a customer endorsement with no additional commentary from Joel. It serves as marketing content for Fog Creek's FogBugz product.

Oh, the emails you’ll get…

Spolsky dissects the management consulting industry's approach to measuring software developer productivity, arguing it's fundamentally fraudulent. He walks through a step-by-step scenario where consultants sell bogus productivity metrics to large companies, programmers game those metrics, and consultants then use the inflated numbers to sell more engagements to competitors. He argues that knowledge work productivity metrics are trivially gameable, making the entire exercise a pointless wealth transfer from corporations to consulting firms. The kicker is that the consultants themselves don't even realize the fraud they're perpetuating.

The infinite music collection

Spolsky enthusiastically reviews the Sonos multi-room music system, describing it as the best piece of technology he's ever bought. He traces his journey from collecting 45s as a kid to having access to 2.5 million songs via Rhapsody, and explains how Sonos wirelessly distributes that music throughout his home. The bulk of the piece praises Sonos's zero-configuration setup and exceptional user interface design, which he contrasts favorably with the pain of setting up printers or Bluetooth. He closes with a technical deep-dive from Sonos's Director of Software Engineering, detailing their cross-platform C++/Linux architecture and build process.

What’s a SQL Injection Bug?

Spolsky recounts trying to sign up for a website where his apostrophe-containing secret answer triggered a raw MySQL error, revealing a SQL injection vulnerability. He explains how the site's programmers were concatenating user input directly into SQL queries, a common but dangerous practice. He walks through exactly how an attacker could exploit this to execute arbitrary SQL, such as deleting an entire database table. He notes that many programming tutorials teach this flawed pattern, and cites research showing 11.3% of web applications had SQL injection vulnerabilities at the time.

Internships

Joel Spolsky shares a brief note about Fog Creek Software's summer internship recruiting season. He references a Boston Globe article that quoted him on how good employers build relationships with professors to find exceptional students. The post serves primarily as a call to action, asking readers to recommend capable students for Fog Creek's internship program. It reflects Joel's ongoing emphasis on hiring top talent as a core business strategy.

Job seeker statistics

Spolsky shares statistics from the geographic search feature added to his job board, revealing where Joel on Software readers are looking for work. He uses the data to answer a common question from companies outside major tech hubs about whether advertising on the board is worthwhile. He explains how RSS-based job subscriptions create a passive but engaged audience of employed-but-open-to-opportunities developers. The post also serves as a transparent explanation of how the statistics are collected and their limitations, including double-counting caveats.

The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (version 3.0)

Joel Spolsky presents his comprehensive guide to interviewing programmers, arguing that hiring is the most critical factor in software project success. He contends that interviewers should evaluate candidates on exactly two criteria: being smart and getting things done. The guide advocates for a rigorous process with multiple interviewers, strict hire/no-hire decisions with no maybes, and a strong bias toward rejecting uncertain candidates. Spolsky recommends using open-ended coding problems (especially involving recursion and pointers) to assess aptitude rather than trivia questions or brain teasers. He emphasizes that rejecting a good candidate is far less costly than hiring a bad one, and that interviewers should look for passion, clear communication, and leadership in candidates' discussions of past work.

The Phone Screen

Joel Spolsky describes his three-part phone screening process for programmer candidates, designed to efficiently filter out poor fits before costly in-person interviews. The first part explores career history to assess problem-solving ability and passion, drilling into both technical depth and how candidates navigated organizational challenges. The second part poses an open-ended design question to evaluate algorithmic thinking through conversation rather than rote coding. The third part lets candidates ask questions, which doubles as a test of preparation and genuine interest. Spolsky argues phone screens are not only cheaper but fairer than in-person interviews, since they reduce snap judgments based on appearance. Even with this filter, only about one in three candidates who pass the phone screen ultimately get hired.

The Phone Screen

This is a brief pointer post directing readers to Joel's full article about phone screening candidates. The core premise is that phone screens serve as an efficient filter to avoid wasting time and money on in-person interviews with candidates who clearly aren't qualified. The post itself contains only a single quote and a link to the detailed article.

Book Review: Beyond Java

Spolsky reviews Bruce Tate's 'Beyond Java' through the lens of Brooks' 'No Silver Bullet' essay, which distinguishes between accidental and essential complexity in programming. He traces five major advances in eliminating accidental difficulties (assemblers through memory-managed languages) and asks what the sixth will be. The book argues that experienced Java programmers are migrating to Python and Ruby, and Spolsky identifies explicit type declarations as the central accidental difficulty that these newer languages eliminate. He concludes that the book makes a compelling case worth reading, while maintaining his characteristic skepticism toward programming language hype.

Джоэл о программировании – only 250 rubles!

Joel Spolsky announces the Russian translation of his book 'Joel on Software.' The post is extremely brief, consisting of just two sentences: one announcing the book's availability and one humorously noting he doesn't recognize the people depicted on the cover. It's a lighthearted promotional post with no substantive technical content.

New Feature: Job Search

Joel announces a new search feature for the Joel on Software job listings board, which had grown to hundreds of listings and needed filtering. The feature includes location-based search with RSS subscription, allowing job seekers outside major tech hubs to monitor opportunities in their area. He describes the implementation details, including ZIP code databases and great circle distance calculations. The post is a casual product update that mixes feature announcement with technical anecdotes about geodesic math.

Stevey on Agile

Joel Spolsky shares a brief link post highlighting Steve Yegge's essay on Agile programming. The post centers on Yegge's colorful and scathing characterization of Agile as a fad embraced by naive programmers. Spolsky implicitly endorses Yegge's skepticism by featuring the quote prominently and recommending a book critical of Extreme Programming. The post reflects the mid-2000s backlash among certain influential developers against Agile methodologies.

Followup on freezing MacBook Pro

Joel follows up on his earlier complaint about his MacBook Pro freezing with spinning beach balls. After running diagnostics that found nothing, a reader suggested checking the console logs, which revealed repeated DNS lookup failures. The root cause turned out to be a known bug in Apple's lookupd process where a crash leaves the process in a zombie state, hanging any application that tries to do DNS resolution. Joel notes that Apple has left this bug unfixed for over two years despite it being filed in their bug tracker.

Amazing X-Ray Glasses from Sprint!

Joel Spolsky delivers a scathing review of Sprint's LG Fusic phone and Power Vision Network service, which Sprint sent to bloggers hoping for positive coverage. He systematically dismantles every aspect of the product: the cheap plastic build quality, the confusing menu system with gratuitous animations, two separate MP3 players that are both broken in different ways, and overpriced content services offering public domain movies on a tiny screen. The review builds to a broader critique of telecom companies trying to be content gatekeepers instead of embracing the open internet. He concludes with a satirical theory that the phone must be designed for four-year-olds, since nothing else explains the toy-like design and unusable interface.

Getting MarkDown and SmartyPants working with EditPad Pro

Joel provides a step-by-step tutorial for integrating Markdown and SmartyPants text processors with EditPad Pro on Windows. The post walks through installing Perl, downloading the necessary scripts, creating a batch file to chain the two processors together, and configuring EditPad Pro's tools menu to run the pipeline. The end result is a one-click workflow that converts a text file to HTML with proper typography and opens it in a browser. It's a brief, purely practical how-to post with no broader argument or commentary.

Optimizing method calls

Joel shares a link to Avi Bryant's technique for optimizing duck-typed method calls, expressing appreciation for the clever approach. He then delivers a dry one-liner noting that Ruby remains slow despite such optimizations.

Ruby Performance Revisited

Joel Spolsky clarifies that his performance concerns are with the Ruby language itself, not the Rails framework, citing benchmark data showing Ruby is dramatically slower than alternatives. He argues that Ruby's duck typing and late binding make it fundamentally difficult to optimize method calls down to efficient CPU instructions. Using FogBugz as a concrete example, he describes computation-intensive features that would be impossible to implement in Ruby. He pushes back against the 'developer cycles vs CPU cycles' talking point as an oversimplification that dismisses legitimate performance concerns, noting that even simple CRUD apps eventually need compute-intensive features like Bayesian spam filtering.

Composing in TextMate with MarkDown

Spolsky describes his experience using TextMate with Markdown on a MacBook Pro to compose long blog articles, since his usual tool CityDesk is Windows-only. He found the combination surprisingly pleasant for generating clean HTML with curly quotes. However, he criticizes OS X's font antialiasing as inferior to Windows ClearType and reports severe system freezes triggered by WiFi disconnections. He ultimately concludes that Word 2007 on Windows XP remains the superior writing experience.

Installing Vista RC1 in VMWare Workstation

Joel reports that Windows Vista RC1 fails to install properly in VMWare Workstation due to a graphics mode switching issue. He finds it suspicious that Microsoft's new OS doesn't work on a competitor's virtualization product while Microsoft sells the competing Virtual PC. He provides a workaround involving forcing VGA mode in the VMX configuration file, and speculates that Vista's Aero/Glass UI may be fundamentally incompatible with VMWare's virtual graphics.

Now accepting summer internship applications

Joel announces that Fog Creek Software is now accepting summer internship applications with a changed process. Previously, they waited until a February deadline to review all applications at once for fairness, but this meant top candidates had already accepted offers elsewhere (notably Microsoft). This year they're switching to a first-come, first-served review process, urging students to apply immediately rather than wait.

Sorting Resumes

Joel Spolsky argues that resumes are an inherently weak signal for evaluating programming candidates, but offers a systematic framework for sorting them fairly. He outlines seven criteria—Passion, Pickiness, English, Brains, Selectivity, Hard-Core, and Diversity—used not as hiring decisions but as a way to prioritize who gets interviewed first. He warns strongly against keyword-matching on technologies, arguing that good programmers can learn any language quickly and that recruiters' fixation on acronyms is counterproductive. The only exception is hiring a lead architect who needs deep experience in a specific stack. He also cautions against adding extra hoops like programming quizzes to the application process, since top candidates with many options will simply skip you.

Sorting Resumes

Joel Spolsky criticizes the technical recruiting industry's over-reliance on keyword matching when screening developer resumes. He argues that recruiters lack understanding of the technologies they filter for, leading to absurd disqualifications of qualified candidates. The post highlights how this mechanical approach to hiring fails both employers and programmers, using concrete examples of recruiter ignorance like demanding impossible years of experience with new technologies or treating synonymous terms as different skills.

A Field Guide to Developers

Spolsky argues that attracting top programming talent requires more than good interview processes — companies must create environments developers actually want to work in. He covers the key factors developers evaluate: private offices (despite Silicon Valley's open-plan obsession), quality physical workspaces and equipment, social dynamics including respect and autonomy, interesting work, and company identity. He contends that money is surprisingly low on developers' priority lists as long as compensation is fair, and that the real differentiators are workplace quality, intellectual respect, and organizational culture.

A Field Guide to Developers

Joel Spolsky outlines what makes a workplace attractive to top software developers, arguing that recruiting great programmers requires creating an environment they actually want to work in. He covers private offices, physical workspace quality, equipment, social dynamics, interesting work, and company identity as key factors. He emphasizes that developers care deeply about autonomy, meritocracy, and being treated as professionals rather than interchangeable cogs. The post argues that many of these investments (like good chairs and monitors) are surprisingly cheap relative to their recruiting and retention impact. Spolsky notes that money is actually low on developers' priority lists as long as compensation is fair, and that workplace culture and environment matter far more. The piece serves as practical advice for companies struggling to attract engineering talent.

Commissioned Headhunters on the Job Board: Good or Bad?

Spolsky addresses the first policy violation on his new job board: a recruiter posting without disclosing the company name. He explains why recruiters prefer anonymity (protecting their commission) and why job seekers find this frustrating. He argues there's a place for both recruiters and transparent job markets, but acknowledges the business dilemma of potentially alienating headhunters who are the biggest spenders on job boards. He opens the question to his community for discussion.

Company Name = Quality Jobs

Spolsky announces that the Joel on Software job board will maintain its policy of requiring company names on all job postings, banning anonymous recruiter posts. He notes overwhelming developer consensus against anonymous job listings from commission-driven recruiters. The policy allows recruiters only if they disclose the actual hiring company. He also announces a new feature displaying Joel Test scores on job listings.

Finding Great Developers

Joel Spolsky argues that the best software developers are essentially never on the open job market because they get hired through connections, internships, and reputation before they ever need to send out resumes. This creates a paradox where traditional recruiting methods like job boards yield piles of resumes dominated by unqualified candidates, with very few worth considering. He proposes three strategies: going where great developers congregate (conferences, niche communities), building a robust internship pipeline that identifies talent before graduation, and creating a developer community around your company. He also warns against over-reliance on employee referrals, especially with cash incentives, which tend to lower hiring quality rather than improve it.

Finding Great Developers

This is a brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky introduces a new job board on his site and announces a series of articles called 'The Guerrilla Guide to Hiring.' He links to the first article in the series, 'Finding Great Developers,' and mentions an upcoming speech at Cornell. The post itself contains no substantive argument, serving purely as a pointer to other content.

Cornell Speech

This is a brief announcement post, not a substantive blog entry. Joel Spolsky simply notifies readers about an upcoming speech he is giving at Cornell University. The post contains no argument, analysis, or insight — just logistical details: the time (5pm) and location (Phillips 203). It appears to have been written as a quick update for readers who might want to attend.

Introducing jobs.joelonsoftware.com

Joel Spolsky announces the launch of jobs.joelonsoftware.com, a niche job board designed to connect great companies with great programmers. He argues that giant job boards like Monster and Craigslist fail both employers and job seekers by producing floods of undifferentiated resumes and vague job listings. His board requires companies to post their actual name, charges $350 per listing to maintain quality, and offers a 90-day money-back guarantee. The goal is a curated, exclusive marketplace where his readership of skilled developers can find transparent, high-quality job listings.

Language Wars

Spolsky addresses the common question of which technology stack to choose for enterprise web applications. He argues that the debate between platforms like .NET, Java, and PHP is largely a waste of time because all three (plus Python as a half-entry) are proven at scale and equally capable of delivering success. The real differentiator is team expertise, not language superiority. He warns against choosing unproven or niche languages for mission-critical work, citing Ruby on Rails as risky and Lisp as a cautionary tale. He concludes that the best language is whichever one your team knows best, and that time spent debating language choice is time wasted.

Wasabi

Joel Spolsky explains why Fog Creek built Wasabi, a custom programming language and compiler for FogBugz. Because FogBugz is deployed on customers' own servers across diverse environments, they needed to target multiple platforms (VBScript on Windows, PHP4/PHP5 on Unix) without maintaining separate codebases. Wasabi compiles a single codebase—backwards-compatible with VBScript but with modern features like closures and lambdas—to all target platforms. Joel argues that building a custom compiler is only about two months of work for one skilled developer, and the benefits of domain-specific languages extend well beyond their particular use case.

My three favorite Firefox extensions

Joel shares his three essential Firefox extensions: IETab for rendering IE-only sites within Firefox, Chris Pederick's Web Developer Extension for testing websites, and Adblock for removing flashing advertisements. He praises IETab for solving compatibility issues with Microsoft sites and the Web Developer Extension as indispensable for web development. His discussion of Adblock leads to a nuanced take on web advertising — he doesn't oppose ads ideologically but objects to flashing ads that exploit evolutionary visual reflexes to cause headaches.

Links

This is a brief link post where Joel Spolsky highlights two notable observations from other writers. David Pogue criticizes LG's poorly designed control system that requires seven warnings in the manual, implying the design itself is flawed. Eric Sink challenges the conventional wisdom around word-of-mouth marketing, arguing that most advice simply states that buzz is good without explaining how to generate it. Joel curates these links without additional commentary, letting the quotes speak for themselves.

Loved or Feared?

Spolsky briefly references a Harvard Business School piece asking whether it's better for leaders to be loved or feared. Rather than engaging with the question itself, he uses it as a springboard to criticize HBS for producing vague, non-committal conclusions. He quotes their wishy-washy takeaway about 'expanding self-awareness' as an example of saying nothing bold or useful.

Superstitious FAQ Writers

Joel observes that online services almost never include instructions for canceling accounts, treating it like a superstition that hiding cancellation will retain customers. He argues this is the result of misapplied A/B testing: companies can easily measure that telling people how to cancel increases cancellations, but they can't measure how many potential customers never sign up because they fear cancellation will be difficult. Joel shares Fog Creek's approach of offering unconditional money-back guarantees and easy cancellation, noting it has cost only 2% of revenue over six years.

Library Apps for Macintosh

Spolsky reviews two Macintosh library management applications, Delicious Library and Booxter, for cataloging a physical book collection. While Delicious Library has charming visual design and easy barcode scanning, it lacks Library of Congress integration, which Spolsky considers essential for organizing books by topic. Booxter provides this LOC integration but neither app can print spine labels, creating a workflow gap. The post illustrates how a visually appealing product can lose to a plainer competitor that solves the actual problem.

There’s got to be a way to do this…

Joel describes a practical problem at Fog Creek: their office library has grown so disorganized that it's easier to buy a new copy from Amazon than find a book they already own. He's looking for software that can scan ISBN barcodes, look up catalog information online, and print spine stickers with Library of Congress numbers so books can be properly shelved. The post is essentially a public request for software recommendations, directed at his readership.

The Identity Management Method

Spolsky presents 'The Identity Method' as the superior management approach for knowledge workers, contrasting it with the previously discussed Command and Control and Econ 101 methods. The technique works by making employees identify with organizational goals, creating intrinsic motivation rather than subverting it. He illustrates this with concrete examples from Fog Creek: shared daily lunches that build family-like bonds, an internship program designed to make people identify as New Yorkers, and sharing financial information so employees can make good decisions autonomously. The key mechanism is twofold: build a cohesive team identity, then give people the information they need to steer correctly. Spolsky argues this is harder than other methods but produces better results, noting that in six years nobody has quit Fog Creek.

The Command and Control Management Method

Spolsky examines the Command and Control management style borrowed from the military and explains why it fails in software development. He identifies three key problems: developers resent being ordered around, managers lack bandwidth to micromanage individual contributors doing different tasks, and the people closest to the work have the most information to make good decisions. He then explains why the military actually uses this method — to override individual self-preservation instincts in life-or-death situations like charging through a minefield — and argues that this rationale simply doesn't apply to software teams where developers can leave anytime.

Three Management Methods (Introduction)

Joel Spolsky introduces a series on three management methods by framing the fundamental challenge of leadership: getting people to move in the same direction despite having different personal agendas. He illustrates this with examples from startups, government, and the military, showing how individual incentives naturally diverge from organizational goals. He sets up three approaches he'll explore in subsequent posts: Command and Control, Econ 101, and the Identity Method. The post serves as a teaser that names the frameworks without yet explaining them.

News

Joel Spolsky explains why there won't be a second edition of 'The Best Software Writing' in 2006. After reviewing nominations, he found insufficient quality material for a full book, with half of what he found coming from a single author. He identifies five reasons for the shortage: good writing is shifting to fragmented blog formats that don't work as essays, there's too much bad writing to sift through, programming magazines have declined in quality, and he lacks the patience to find hidden gems.

Can Your Programming Language Do This?

Joel Spolsky walks through a progressive tutorial on first-class functions in JavaScript, starting from simple code deduplication and building up to anonymous functions, map, and reduce. He argues that languages supporting first-class functions enable developers to find more abstraction opportunities, producing smaller, more reusable code. The post connects these functional programming concepts directly to Google's MapReduce, arguing that abstracting away looping enables massive parallelization. He uses this as evidence for why CS students need exposure to functional programming, not just Java. The post culminates in the claim that the most productive programming environments allow working at different levels of abstraction.

Corrections!

Joel posts two brief corrections to previous statements. First, he clarifies that his criticism of FORTRAN not allowing functions applied to very old versions, not modern ones, acknowledging he last used WATFOR 27 years prior. Second, he corrects his claim that the Google Mini communicated with Google for PageRank data, noting that Google's product managers confirmed the device deliberately avoids 'phoning home' to protect intranet customers' privacy.

Why Dell.com Still Feels Like Buying a Used Car

Spolsky revisits his long-standing complaint that Dell's website forces customers to identify their 'segment' (home, small business, large business) before shopping, creating a frustrating experience. Dell's own blog acknowledged customers hate this but defended it as creating 'greater value.' Spolsky argues the real reason is price discrimination — charging business customers more for the same products. He points out that competitors like Apple sell to everyone at the same price without segmentation. The negotiation-heavy purchasing process means Dell loses easy online sales because customers have been trained to haggle. He concludes that the website designers lack the authority to fix what is fundamentally a top-down business strategy decision.

Private Offices Redux

Spolsky responds to Microsoft's 'Workplace Advantage' initiative, which reclassifies employees into four types to determine optimal workspace configurations. He acknowledges that private offices aren't ideal for every role, but firmly argues they remain essential for programmers. Drawing on his own experience with Project Aardvark interns, he describes how open spaces destroy programmer concentration by turning every two-person conversation into a group interruption. He reports that switching to more private workspaces for summer interns improved productivity without hurting communication.

Travelers Insurance: Drop Dead.

Joel Spolsky excoriates Travelers Insurance for running an ad in Inc. Magazine that stereotypes geeks as threats and criminals. The ad depicted a poorly-dressed person and warned business owners about 'high-tech criminals,' implying geeks are dangerous. Spolsky argues the ad is offensive on multiple levels: it demonizes the people who build technology, it reflects high-school bully mentality, and it insults the very audience reading Inc. Magazine. He points out the irony of insurance salesmen claiming to protect against geeks, and concludes by announcing he's taking his business elsewhere.

Search Box

Joel describes his experience setting up a Google Mini search appliance to power search on his blog. He finds the setup process mostly straightforward but notes several rough edges, including an infuriating IP configuration procedure and a clunky software upgrade process. He's impressed that the device ranks results well despite not using Google's full infrastructure, though a later correction notes it doesn't actually phone home for PageRank data. The post is essentially a casual product review that touches briefly on the broader concept of hardware appliances versus software solutions.

Open House

Joel Spolsky announces an open house event at Fog Creek Software's newly expanded office space. He invites readers to visit, meet the team and summer interns, and enjoy snacks and wine. The post is a brief, informal invitation with event details including date, time, and address in midtown Manhattan.

Wanted: System / Network Administrator

Joel Spolsky describes how system administration tasks have consumed his time at Fog Creek Software, with a simple task like creating an email address taking an entire day due to the complexity of their infrastructure. He announces that Fog Creek needs to hire a dedicated full-time system/network administrator. The post doubles as a job listing, detailing the mixed-platform environment and extensive technology stack the role would manage. Joel uses the opportunity to showcase Fog Creek's developer-friendly benefits and culture.

A solution to tabs-vs.-spaces

Joel Spolsky shares Nick Gravgaard's 'elastic tabstops' proposal as a solution to the perennial tabs-vs-spaces debate in programming. The post is extremely brief, essentially just a link to Gravgaard's idea that tab characters should be treated as delimiters between table cells rather than fixed-width spacing. By reframing tabs as structural delimiters rather than visual formatting, the proposal attempts to sidestep the holy war entirely.

My First BillG Review

Joel Spolsky recounts his experience as a Program Manager at Microsoft in the early 1990s, where he was tasked with designing what became Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in Excel. He describes the technical decisions behind the language design, including adding Variants, late binding, For Each, and With statements. The centerpiece of the story is his BillG review, where Bill Gates had read his entire 500-page spec overnight and asked increasingly difficult questions, culminating in a question about date functions that Joel could answer only because he'd stumbled onto the Lotus 1-2-3 leap year bug the day before. The post uses this anecdote to argue that technical founders who understand their products deeply are far superior to MBA-type managers who treat management as a generic skill.

Gates to Step Down

Joel Spolsky briefly reacts to the announcement that Bill Gates will step down from Microsoft. He notes that Microsoft's stock is surprisingly stable despite the news, argues it should be declining, and offers his assessment that Ray Ozzie, while smart, is not in Gates' league. He concludes with the provocative claim that Steve Ballmer is the one who really needs to leave.

There are easier ways…

Joel Spolsky responds to Paul Boutin's article about struggling with remote desktop assistance software, which took most of an hour to configure. Joel recommends Copilot (Fog Creek's own product) as a simpler alternative that is secure by default, works through firewalls, and takes only minutes to set up.

FogBugz 5.0 Ships

This is an extremely brief announcement post noting that FogBugz 5.0 has shipped. Joel acknowledges that the release is more of an incremental update (closer to version 4.5) but they chose to call it 5.0 to avoid confusing fractional version numbers. The post is essentially a one-liner linking to a longer article about the release.

Lazy Programmer, Didn’t Handle Exception

Joel uses a frustrating experience with Cingular's customer service to illustrate how unhandled exceptions in software mirror broken organizational systems. When software fails with a generic 'call customer service' message, and customer service has no idea what went wrong, it creates an impossible loop. He argues this is a systemic management failure where outsourced call centers are disconnected from outsourced development teams, making feedback impossible. He contrasts this with Fog Creek's approach where bug reports go directly to developers and customer service sits next to programmers.

Aardvark’d Screening in New York

Joel announces the screening of 'Aardvark'd,' a documentary about Fog Creek's summer interns, at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival. He describes how the film is used as a recruiting tool for new intern candidates. He also highlights the scale and perks of their internship program, which received hundreds of applications and offers generous benefits including free housing, high-end equipment, and cultural events.

Muriel Spark, 1918-2006

Joel Spolsky posts a brief tribute to novelist Muriel Spark upon her death, sharing a single extended passage from her novel 'The Finishing School.' The excerpt features a creative writing teacher instructing students on scene-setting, advising restraint and patience before introducing emphasis or point-of-view. The post is purely appreciative, offering the quote without commentary, letting Spark's prose speak for itself as a demonstration of her craft.

The Development Abstraction Layer

Spolsky argues that the primary job of management in a software company is to build a 'development abstraction layer' that shields programmers from all non-coding concerns — infrastructure, sales, administration, office logistics — so they can focus purely on writing code. He illustrates this through a parable of a talented programmer who builds flawless software but fails as a solo entrepreneur because he lacks the organizational support layer that turns code into products. Spolsky contrasts the traditional command-and-control management model with his proposed model where management exists to serve developers, not direct them. He argues that companies succeed when they are driven by programmers but organized with excellent support infrastructure beneath them, and that the best abstraction is one that disappears completely.

Internship in Graphic Design

This is a brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky advertises a paid summer internship position in graphic design or web design at Fog Creek Software in New York City. The post asks readers to spread the word to any students who might be interested. There is no substantive argument or analysis — it is purely a job listing promotion.

Foreword to “Eric Sink on the Business of Software”

Joel Spolsky writes the foreword to Eric Sink's book on the business of software by telling a personal anecdote about selling donuts at age fourteen during a summer institute. He bought donuts wholesale and sold them at a markup, watching his small business grow organically over the summer, only to have the department chairman confiscate his profits for a party he couldn't attend. Spolsky uses this story as a springboard to describe the thrill of watching a business grow incrementally — from a few customers a day to unmanageable sales reports. He compares growing a software business to gardening, emphasizing the joy of organic, plant-like growth over time.

Best Software Writing – Volume II

Joel Spolsky announces a call for nominations for 'The Best Software Writing, Volume II,' a follow-up to his successful first anthology of great software development writing from around the web. He recaps his motivation: the software world is drowning in poorly written technical books and low-quality online commentary. The first volume was a hit, validating his belief that the community needs and wants better writing about software. He invites readers to nominate their favorite articles via a discussion group before the April 15th deadline.

What’s the Joel Reddit?

Joel Spolsky announces a custom Reddit community at joel.reddit.com, designed as a link-sharing and voting platform for his blog readers. The site lets users post interesting links from around the web, with the best content rising to the top through community voting. He positions it as a solution to the flood of 'check out my thing' emails he receives daily, redirecting self-promotion to a meritocratic community filter. He encourages readers to use their voting power to surface quality content and bury spam.

Software Development Productivity Awards

Joel announces that two Fog Creek products won Software Development magazine's 16th Annual Productivity Awards. Fog Creek Copilot won in the Utilities category, while FogBugz 4.0 won in the Defect Tracking category. He credits the interns who built Copilot in a single summer. He also notes that Software Development magazine is merging with Dr. Dobb's Journal, pointing to the decline of developer print media.

Usability in One Easy Step

This is a very short teaser post where Joel Spolsky introduces a revised excerpt from his book 'User Interface Design for Programmers.' He uses dramatic examples from aviation safety to hook readers into thinking about usability design. The post frames usability as a life-or-death concern, using the concept of CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain) to illustrate how poor interface design has real consequences. Joel notes he is in the process of extensively rewriting and expanding his earlier book on UI design.

A lot of travelling

Joel Spolsky outlines his busy March 2006 conference schedule, which takes him across California and Texas for multiple speaking engagements. He'll be presenting on UI design and usability testing at ETech, participating in a startup panel at SXSW, screening the Aardvark'd documentary at SDWest, and appearing at EclipseCon. The post is a brief, informal travel update peppered with his characteristic dry humor and offhand jabs at conference culture and Java.

Processing Internship Applications

Spolsky describes Fog Creek's rigorous process for evaluating 400+ summer internship applications for five positions. The process involves objective screening against six criteria, followed by subjective evaluation by three senior developers, phone screens, and in-person interviews with all expenses paid. He defends the process against accusations of elitism by pointing out that hiring top talent enables the company to build sophisticated products and maintain high revenue-per-employee. However, he acknowledges a fundamental tension: the resume-based system discriminates against non-traditional candidates, and some of the most brilliant programmers look terrible on paper.

More on Calendars

Joel follows up on his previous calendar software evaluation to highlight Airset, an online calendar he overlooked. He finds it significantly better than the hyped alternatives he previously reviewed. He admits he was deterred from trying it because the website lacked screenshots and easy trial access, and because a reviewer had chosen a competitor. He acknowledges this was a mistake and notes he still has feature requests for the product.

Too Many Ajax Calendars

Spolsky reviews several Ajax-based calendar applications and finds none of them adequate for his real-world scheduling needs. He identifies specific failures around time zones, flight entry, notifications, printing, and delegation. He argues that shipping premature products and getting press coverage backfires because users who try a half-baked product rarely return. He theorizes that these calendar startups aren't building for actual users but are hoping to be acquired by Yahoo!, which he criticizes for buying companies instead of hiring programmers. The post warns that building a product for a single acquirer is a fundamentally risky business strategy.

VMWare Server Now Free!

Joel announces that VMware Server is now available for free, highlighting it as a significant development. He references his long-standing enthusiasm for VMware Workstation and his desire for an affordable server virtualization option. Previously, VMware's server products (GSX and ESX) were expensive and complicated, but this free release changes the landscape. He endorses the product as mature and production-ready.

FogBugz/SnagIt

This is an extremely brief link post where Joel Spolsky shares that someone named Andy created a mashup integrating FogBugz (Fog Creek's bug tracking software) with TechSmith's SnagIt screenshot tool. The post contains virtually no analysis or commentary beyond a single word of approval. It serves as a quick signal boost for a community-built integration with Joel's product.

Conferences

Joel briefly highlights complaints from Jeff Jarvis and Robert Scoble about the conference industry. Jarvis claims too many conferences are poor quality, while Scoble points out that scaling conferences to 1,000+ attendees causes costs to rise exponentially due to convention center price gouging. The post is essentially a link roundup with minimal original commentary.

Great Design – Table of Contents

This post serves as a table of contents for Joel Spolsky's planned series on 'Great Design,' organized into three sections: Introduction, Good Design, and Great Design. Many articles are derived from his book 'User Interface Design for Programmers.' The series covers fundamentals like user models, affordances, and usability testing, then advances to deeper topics like emotional design, social interfaces, and the tension between user happiness and user success. Most entries are listed but not yet written, making this more of an outline than a finished work.

What Makes It Great? (First Draft)

Spolsky introduces his 'Great Design' series by distinguishing between good design and great design. He argues that the best products in every category succeed despite obvious flaws, not because they're flawless. Good design — usability, features, price optimization — can only get you to #2 in a market. Great design is an ineffable quality that makes people fall in love with products despite their shortcomings. He uses examples like the iPod, Aeron chair, and Brad Pitt to illustrate how market leaders dominate not through superior specs but through something harder to define. The series will cover usability fundamentals first, then explore the 'black magic' of what elevates good design to greatness.

What Makes It Great? (First Draft)

Spolsky introduces a distinction between 'good design' and 'great design,' arguing that market-leading products succeed despite obvious flaws rather than because of flawless execution. He uses examples like the iPod, Aeron chair, and Brad Pitt to show that dominance in a category comes from an ineffable quality that makes people fall in love with products despite their shortcomings. He contrasts this with competitors like Creative's ZEN players, which beat the iPod on specs but can't capture market share. The post serves as a roadmap for a series that will first cover usability fundamentals, then explore the 'black magic' that separates good from great.

What Makes It Great?

This is a brief introductory post linking to the third part of Joel Spolsky's 'Great Design' series. It teases the question of what separates best-in-class products from their competitors, using examples like the iPod, Aeron chair, and Brad Pitt. The post itself is essentially a pointer to the longer essay rather than a standalone argument.

Great Design: What is Design? (First Draft)

Joel Spolsky defines design as fundamentally an engineering problem about resolving conflicting constraints, not an artistic exercise in decoration. Using the example of designing a city street corner trashcan, he illustrates how real design requirements inherently conflict: light yet heavy, big yet small, open yet closed. He extends this to software, arguing that every feature represents a tradeoff between power users who need it and everyone else who must navigate increased complexity. Spolsky concludes that design is a fixed cost that adds value to every unit sold, making it the single most important factor in a product's success.

What is “Design”?

Joel Spolsky draws a sharp distinction between design and decoration using the example of New York City brownstones. He notes that architects would delegate ornamental details to craftsmen by simply writing 'beautiful fretwork' on plans. Spolsky argues this delegation of aesthetic embellishment is decoration, not design. The post serves as a teaser for a longer essay on what design actually means.

Introduction to Great Design (First Draft)

Joel Spolsky introduces a planned series on great UI design by recounting his frustrating experience trying to turn on his cell phone. He argues that while desktop software UI had reached a decent standard by 2000, the explosion of consumer gadgets and the web undid that progress by introducing inconsistent, confusing interfaces. He observes that a few exceptional designers have managed to create truly great products amid the chaos, and announces his intent to explore what separates good design from great design in a series of articles.

Introduction to Great Design

Joel Spolsky introduces a forthcoming piece on great design by using a relatable example: the confusing power buttons on a cell phone. He highlights how even simple devices with just two buttons can be unintuitive, where the 'obvious' choice (green button to turn on) is wrong. This teaser post links to the first draft of his longer work on design principles.

News, and, the end of ?off

Joel Spolsky shares miscellaneous updates about Fog Creek Software, including office construction with a new contractor, the summer internship application deadline, and the Aardvark'd documentary being featured on Google Video. The main substantive announcement is his decision to shut down '?off,' a hidden, uncensored off-topic discussion forum on his site. The forum had devolved from irreverent banter among a small community into genuinely disturbing, psychopathic behavior. Joel frames the closure as a lesson about what happens when you allow completely unmoderated online spaces.

Jolt Award Finalists for 2006

This is a very brief promotional post where Joel Spolsky announces that three Fog Creek products and projects — Fog Creek Copilot, FogBugz, and his book 'The Best Software Writing I' — are all finalists for the 2006 Jolt Awards. The post is structured as a simple Q&A riddle. There is no substantive argument or analysis; it is purely an announcement.

Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality

In this foreword to Bob Walsh's book on micro-ISVs, Spolsky pushes back against the term 'MicroISV' while offering practical advice for aspiring software entrepreneurs. He argues the term was coined by Microsoft to diminish independent software companies. He provides a three-point checklist: solve a real pain point, don't go solo, and set realistic revenue expectations. He illustrates revenue growth with a memorable model showing how starting at $364/month and doubling regularly can build a real business over time.

Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality

Joel Spolsky emphasizes that the foundation of any business must be solving a clear, identifiable pain point for customers. He argues that entrepreneurs must be able to articulate what problem they solve, for whom, and how customers will pay for the solution. He illustrates his point with an anecdote about attending six startup presentations where none could clearly explain what pain they addressed. This is excerpted from his foreword to Bob Walsh's book on running a one-person software company.

Test Yourself

Spolsky shares programming questions from his freshman midterm exams at Penn, inviting readers to test themselves. He admits that despite being a self-taught programmer who had built two major production systems, he struggled with pointers and recursion on these exams. The post presents four exercises covering functional programming (accumulate/fold), pointer arithmetic in C, and basic recursion in both Scheme and JavaScript. It serves as a humbling reminder that practical programming experience doesn't automatically translate to computer science fundamentals.

The Perils of JavaSchools

Joel Spolsky argues that the widespread adoption of Java as the primary teaching language in university CS programs is producing graduates who lack fundamental programming abilities. He contends that pointers and recursion — traditionally taught through C and Scheme — serve as essential 'weed-out' mechanisms that identify students with the mental flexibility required for great programming. By removing these difficult concepts, JavaSchools produce more graduates but fewer truly capable programmers. Spolsky connects this to real-world consequences, noting that Google's invention of MapReduce came directly from functional programming knowledge that JavaSchool graduates would lack. He concludes that these dumbed-down curricula fail both industry and academia.

Saporasaki

Joel announces the Japanese translation of his book 'Joel on Software,' thanking translator Yasushi Aoki and publisher Ohmsha. He notes the book is now available in five languages and praises the translation quality, highlighting how closely the translator worked with him on cultural references and jokes. He shares a personal anecdote about his father's book being translated to Japanese when he was a child, and his attempt to decipher the family name in Japanese characters. A reader correction clarifies the actual Japanese pronunciation of his surname.

Behold, the Copilot Beer Pong Table

This post is essentially a placeholder or stub consisting of a single character 'x' with a title referencing a 'Copilot Beer Pong Table.' There is no substantive content to analyze. It likely accompanied an image or was a quick throwaway post on Joel Spolsky's blog from 2005.

Interesting Links

Joel Spolsky shares a curated list of interesting links and media recommendations. He highlights an aviation blog called Enplaned, introduces Reddit as a user-submitted links site, and reviews several podcasts. He recommends TWiT and VentureVoice as the only two podcasts worth regular listening, while criticizing the Gilmore Gang for poor audio quality and Adam Curry's show for being too self-referential about podcasting itself.

Shipping Atoms

This is a very brief link post where Joel Spolsky points readers to his longer article 'How to Ship Anything,' which describes how Fog Creek Software optimized their physical order shipping process, reducing the labor time from 3 minutes to 35 seconds per order. The post serves as a teaser for the full article about operational efficiency in a software company's fulfillment process.

Shipping Update

Joel provides a brief update on Fog Creek's in-house order shipping system, reporting impressive efficiency metrics of one order every 12 seconds with two workers. He uses this as a real-world vindication of his earlier argument against outsourcing critical business functions, quoting extensively from his 2001 essay 'In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome' about the dangers of losing direct control over fulfillment and customer service.

How to Ship Anything

Joel Spolsky describes building an in-house shipping system ('FogShip') to handle the overwhelming volume of orders for Aardvark DVDs. The initial ad-hoc process using Mail Merge and manual customs forms took about three minutes per order and required technical skills. After researching tools, he spent three days building a barcode-driven system using Microsoft Access, a Zebra label printer, Endicia for postage, and HP LaserJets for customs forms. The new system reduced shipping time to 35 seconds per order and eliminated the need for SQL expertise, turning a painful process into something anyone could operate.

News

This is an extremely brief news update from Joel Spolsky about Fog Creek Software's office expansion. The company has acquired a loft space next door to their existing offices and plans to build eleven new offices there. In the interim, the empty space is being used as a ping-pong room. The post is essentially a throwaway status update with no substantive argument or analysis.

Fog Creek Goes to ETech

Joel briefly announces that Fog Creek Software will be attending O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference (ETech) in spring 2006. All Fog Creek programmers unanimously chose ETech from a list of about 12 conferences. Joel praises the previous year's conference for its interesting presentations and valuable attendee interactions.

Aardvark’d DVDs Ship; Final P&L

Joel shares the experience of self-fulfilling 2,600 DVD orders for Fog Creek's documentary 'Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks,' which far exceeded his expectation of 1,000 orders. He details the logistical lessons learned from a three-day packing ordeal, including the value of barcodes, combining packing slips with shipping labels, and proper counter height for standing work. He then provides a full financial breakdown of the movie's production and distribution costs, showing a final profit of approximately $6,048. Joel notes he originally just hoped to break even, with the real 'profit' being increased visibility for Fog Creek's internship program.

Reading List: Fog Creek Software Management Training Program

Joel Spolsky announces a new management training program at Fog Creek Software that will span three years and require reading approximately 75 books at a pace of one every two weeks. The program aims to develop managers through a curated reading list covering business classics, software management, and tech company histories. The post serves as a call for suggestions, presenting a first draft of the reading list. Joel emphasizes the program's intensity and long-term commitment to developing management talent internally.

Reading List

Joel Spolsky announces a reading list for Fog Creek's Software Management Training Program and contrasts it with traditional management consulting entry-level positions. He argues that management consulting firms exploit young graduates with grueling travel and grunt work under the guise of 'paying dues,' while Fog Creek offers genuine mentorship and practical software industry education. The post also briefly mentions a podcast interview and updates on the Aardvark'd documentary film. The core pitch is that ambitious young people should choose Fog Creek over consulting firms for a more substantive early career experience.

Aardvark’d DVD Goes on Sale

Joel Spolsky announces the DVD release of 'Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks With Geeks,' a documentary filmed during Fog Creek Software's summer internship program. The project was inspired by his frustration with The Apprentice's shallow portrayal of business challenges and the lack of good documentaries about software development. He hired NYU grad Lerone Wilson to film the interns building a product from scratch over one summer, with the filmmaker maintaining editorial control. The documentary features appearances from Dan Bricklin and Paul Graham, and was made available for pre-order at $19.95.

Asterisk, Ajax, and Astronauts

This is a very brief link post where Joel Spolsky points readers to a podcast interview he did with CIO Magazine's Technology Editor Christopher Lindquist. The interview covers three topics: Asterisk (the open-source phone system), Ajax (the web development technique), and 'Astronauts' (likely referring to Joel's concept of 'architecture astronauts'). There is no substantive content in the post itself beyond the link.

Webstock: a Web Conference in New Zealand

Joel Spolsky announces he will be speaking at Webstock, a web conference in Wellington, New Zealand. He notes he hasn't visited New Zealand since 1987 and remarks on the extremely long travel time from New York City. He considers combining the trip with other meetings or conferences in the region to make the journey worthwhile.

Massive Frontal PR is incompatible with Ship Early and Often

Joel critiques Microsoft's launch of live.com, a beta portal that doesn't work properly in Firefox or even IE, arguing it exemplifies the 'Marimba Phenomenon' where companies spend more on PR than development. He contends that shipping early and often is incompatible with massive PR launches, because a huge audience seeing a half-baked product forms permanently negative impressions. Small companies with modest marketing budgets are better positioned to iterate publicly, since fewer people witness the early bugs. He contrasts Microsoft's botched launch with Fog Creek's Copilot, which fixed serious bugs before most users ever encountered them.

A Minor Redesign

Joel explains the reasoning behind a minor redesign of his blog's homepage. The key change adds a left column with narrative text aimed at first-time visitors who land on the site with no context. He was motivated by Jakob Nielsen's post on weblog usability. Joel deliberately avoids polished design, preferring the authenticity of a geek-made site over corporate slickness, and notes he even rejected a professional design he'd commissioned because it looked too shiny.

Fog Creek Software Management Training Program

Joel Spolsky announces the launch of the Fog Creek Software Management Training Program, a three-year intensive program designed to develop the next generation of software management talent. The post acknowledges that Fog Creek has primarily hired programmers up to this point and signals a strategic shift toward building management capacity. The program aims to teach participants everything Fog Creek knows about the software industry.

Why eBay Bought Skype

Joel Spolsky offers his theory on why eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion, dismissing the official rationale about enabling communication during auctions. He argues that eBay, having been taken over by MBAs too early, became constitutionally incapable of building software internally — as evidenced by the BillPoint vs. PayPal debacle. With excess cash that executives couldn't justify returning to shareholders, eBay had to acquire rather than build. Spolsky warns that this acquisition is fueling bubble thinking, with investors drawing false architectural parallels between unrelated companies like Skype and del.icio.us.

Architecture Astronauts Are Back

Joel Spolsky revisits his 'architecture astronaut' concept, arguing that a new wave of meaningless buzzword-stringing has emerged around Web 2.0, tagging, folksonomies, and related concepts. He contends that 'Web 2.0' is not a real concept but rather a vague, nebulous term that makes people feel stupider. He also criticizes the term's implicit condescension toward earlier web practitioners. In a brief aside, he laments Microsoft's increasingly corporate culture where easter eggs are fireable offenses. He pledges to never use the term 'Web 2.0' again on his blog.

News

Joel shares a link to a VentureVoice interview with VC Brad Feld, who discusses the fundamental scaling problem with consulting businesses versus product businesses. Feld discovered that doubling headcount in a consulting firm doubles revenue but keeps profits flat. Joel highlights Feld's observation that transitioning from consulting to products is particularly difficult. The post also recommends a VentureVoice piece about launching companies at the DEMO Conference.

News

This is a very brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky expresses excitement about a preview of the upcoming 'Project Aardvark' movie (later released as 'Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks'), a documentary about Fog Creek Software interns building Copilot. The post contains no substantive argument or analysis, serving purely as a teaser for the film.

News

Spolsky criticizes Microsoft's approach to database technology, particularly the Jet engine upgrade that won't be redistributable to end users, making it useless for ISVs. He argues that Microsoft's failure to provide native, reliable full-text search in any of its database products is embarrassing for 2005. He contrasts Microsoft's low-level, procedural thinking with Google's higher-level abstractions like Bayesian filtering and internet-scale statistical approaches, warning that Microsoft risks falling further behind.

News

Joel Spolsky reflects on the vibrant startup scene in Boston after visiting a Y Combinator party, contrasting it with New York's comparatively quiet tech culture. He speculates that New York's high cost of living, distractions, and talent drain to finance and media may explain the gap. The post then shifts to discussing workplace productivity research on interruptions and multitasking, citing Gloria Mark's studies. Joel reinforces his long-held argument that private offices are superior to open floor plans for developer productivity, acknowledging the serendipitous knowledge transfer of open spaces but arguing the interruption costs outweigh the benefits. He shares a concrete example from Fog Creek's intern experience where one interruption cascaded to the entire team. He announces plans to double Fog Creek's office space to ensure every developer gets a private office.

News

This post contains two distinct segments. First, Joel shares a Paul Graham quote about how simplicity in UI design requires genuine effort and genius, using a modern stove with confusing buttons as an example of regression from a perfectly functional knob-based design. Second, Joel describes how Fog Creek eliminated paper-based fax handling by chaining a $16 fax modem, $69 fax server software, and FogBugz's email integration to automatically convert incoming faxes into trackable bugs in their system.

News

This post covers two unrelated topics. First, Spolsky critiques Microsoft's Event Log error help system, noting that clicking the built-in help URL rarely provides useful information, while simply Googling the error text almost always does — illustrating Microsoft's failure to appreciate the power of free-form search. Second, he draws a strategic parallel between JetBlue's Boston shuttle launch and Dell's entry into the server market, arguing both are examples of attacking a competitor's profit center to undermine cross-subsidization of competing products.

News

Joel Spolsky describes the fundamental paradox of custom software development: even when you follow every best practice — getting requirements, writing specs, obtaining sign-off — the customer is still horrified by the result. He argues that the best-case scenario in custom development is that the client simply never uses your work and never calls you again.

Set Your Priorities

Joel Spolsky describes how to prioritize features for a software product, using FogBugz 5.0 as a case study. He first warns against two common prioritization mistakes: building features promised to individual customers (which leads to consultingware) and doing tasks just because they're 'inevitable' (which is procrastination in disguise). He then presents a practical group prioritization method learned from Excel 5 planning: list features on cards, vote to eliminate unpopular ones, assign rough costs, then give everyone fake money to 'buy' the features they care about most. Dividing total spend by cost produces a ranked priority list that reflects collective wisdom. The whole process took three hours and produced a list the team felt genuinely reflected the right priorities.

News

This is a brief news roundup post from Joel Spolsky covering several short items. He shares positive reviews of Fog Creek Copilot's remote support software, announces a keynote at EclipseCon 2006, and promotes an early Ajax development book. The post highlights Fog Creek's growing product line and Joel's speaking profile, while noting the team's increasing interest in Ajax web development techniques.

News

This is a brief job posting announcement rather than a traditional blog post. Joel Spolsky announces that Fog Creek Software is hiring Tech Support Engineers in New York City. The role involves supporting FogBugz customers via phone and email, including helping them deploy the software on Windows and Unix servers. Joel highlights the company's good working conditions and benefits.

News

This is a brief, somber post from August 31, 2005, written in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans. Joel shares a photo from a happier visit to the city in 2003 and quotes from the Book of Lamentations. The post is a moment of pause from his usual software commentary to acknowledge a national tragedy. It reflects the shock and grief felt across the country as the scale of the disaster became clear.

News

Joel Spolsky shares a concrete example from Project Aardvark where designing screens on paper revealed a major simplification: requiring the helper to initiate the process instead of either party. This spec-level change took hours rather than the weeks it would have cost in code. He uses this as evidence to champion Big Design Up Front (BDUF) against Extreme Programming's iterative approach, stating unequivocally that XP proponents are wrong about dismissing upfront design.

The Project Aardvark Spec

Joel Spolsky publishes the original specification for Project Aardvark (later Copilot.com) as a historical artifact, using it to illustrate the value of writing detailed specs before coding. He acknowledges one major error in the spec regarding SSL proxy server behavior, which added about 10% unplanned work. He argues that specs don't need to be perfect—they just need to minimize surprises during development. Spolsky strongly defends Big Design Up Front (BDUF) against Extreme Programming advocates, citing concrete examples where spec-level decisions saved weeks of coding time. He also notes how usability testing led to a late but inexpensive design change.

News

Joel Spolsky considers setting up a wiki for translated versions of his Joel on Software articles. He wants to empower volunteer translators to publish directly rather than bottlenecking through him. He asks readers for advice on wiki software, specifying requirements like Wikipedia-style formatting, version history for vandalism control, and a self-organizing community model.

News

Joel Spolsky shares several news items and recommendations in a brief link roundup post. He highlights a glowing Dr. Dobbs review of the FogBugz book by Mike Gunderloy, comparing it favorably to Kernighan and Ritchie's C book. He mentions an academic paper on programmer performance variation, promotes his own audio interview about 'The Best Software Writing I,' and recommends Michael Kaplan's out-of-print book on internationalization as essential reading for Unicode comprehension.

News

Joel Spolsky announces the launch of Fog Creek Copilot 1.0, a product built entirely by summer interns as part of Project Aardvark. The post is a brief celebration of the shipping milestone, crediting the four interns who developed it over the summer.

News

Joel Spolsky shares the first external review of Fog Creek Copilot, a remote desktop assistance product. The review from FusionAuthority praises the product's high screen quality, near real-time mouse responsiveness, clean uninstallation, and zero-configuration firewall bypassing. Joel closes with a humorous aside about the review site apparently making a joke about Fog Creek's interns.

News

This is a brief news post linking to Joel's longer article about usability testing with Morae software. The core message is that usability testing is remarkably efficient — even a small number of test subjects in a single day can reveal major disconnects between how a program behaves and how users expect it to behave. Joel frames this as accessible even to someone not at their sharpest, emphasizing the low barrier to gaining valuable insights.

Usability Testing with Morae

Spolsky describes his experience using TechSmith's Morae software to conduct usability testing at Fog Creek, contrasting it with both expensive professional usability labs and cheap hallway testing. He explains how Morae uses webcams to create an affordable middle-ground usability lab setup. During testing of Fog Creek Copilot, they discovered that users were confused by the helper application deleting itself after use, violating the fundamental principle that programs should behave as users expect. Spolsky notes the irony that this violated a principle he himself wrote about in his own book on UI design.

News

Joel shares brief company updates: Fog Creek is outgrowing its office space and hoping to expand next door, the interns have been improving Copilot.com's performance with proxy server support and speed optimizations, the team is attending a showing of Glengarry Glen Ross as sales training, and Joel thanks someone for a Unicode t-shirt.

News

This is a very brief correction note to a previous post. Joel points out that the compression algorithm commonly known as 'LZW' should more properly be called 'ZLW' or 'Ziv-Lempel-Welch,' since the original paper credited Ziv as the primary author. The post is only 35 words and serves as a minor factual addendum rather than a substantive essay.

Hitting the High Notes

Spolsky argues that hiring the best programmers isn't just about productivity gains — it's about reaching creative heights that mediocre developers simply cannot achieve. Using data from Yale's CS 323 course, he demonstrates 5:1 to 10:1 productivity variations among programmers, with no correlation between time spent and code quality. But beyond raw productivity, he contends that great software requires stylistic and emotional qualities — like Apple's iPod design or Winamp's irreverent personality — that no number of average developers can produce. The software market is winner-take-all, making 'good enough' a losing strategy. His formula remains: best working conditions attract best programmers, who build best software, which generates profit.

News

This is a very brief teaser post promoting Joel's longer article 'Hitting the High Notes.' Joel poses rhetorical questions about whether the variation in programmer talent is significant enough to matter. He suggests that while the answer may seem obvious to some, many people still need convincing that the best programmers are dramatically better than average ones.

News

This is a very brief news update post where Joel links to a report and photos from a Fog Creek Open House event. He also highlights a fellow attendee's website, Deadprogrammer's Cafe, using it to illustrate his observation about the density of interesting experiences in New York City compared to smaller cities.

News

Joel provides a brief update on the beta launch of Fog Creek Copilot, a remote assistance tool. The product is being rolled out gradually, starting with 50 beta testers and expanding to 150. The team is fixing deployment bugs related to running on a multi-server web farm versus the single-server development environment. Joel highlights the engineering work going into high-availability features like connection draining and automatic failover.

News

This brief post shares a quote about the frustration programmers face when roped into providing free tech support for friends and family. The quote captures the escalation from a seemingly simple fix into hours of remote troubleshooting misery. Spolsky uses it to highlight the social burden placed on technical people and links to the Project Aardvark Midterm Report for further context.

Project Aardvark Midterm Report

Joel Spolsky introduces Fog Creek Copilot, a remote desktop assistance product being built by summer interns as 'Project Aardvark.' The product solves the universal pain of trying to help non-technical family members fix computer problems over the phone by providing seamless, firewall-penetrating screen sharing. Joel explains why entering a market with existing competitors doesn't bother him, emphasizing that Fog Creek's advantage lies in making the experience shockingly seamless rather than inventing a new category. The post covers the product's naming process, their first trade show experience, and the compressed schedule to ship to paying customers before the internship ends.

News

Joel announces his appearance at CFUNITED, a ColdFusion developers conference in Bethesda, Maryland. He will deliver a keynote and a session on The Joel Test. The Project Aardvark interns will publicly demo their product SidePilot for the first time at the Fog Creek booth. Joel offers free exhibit passes and discounted conference registration to his blog readers.

News

This is a very brief news update post where Joel Spolsky celebrates his book 'The Best Software Writing I' reaching #1 in computer books on Amazon and selling out its first printing in three days. He humorously attributes part of its success to including a contributor's drawing of a cow. He also shares a quote from Queen Elizabeth II complaining about Sony's overly complex remote controls, endorsing her sentiment about poor UI design.

News

Joel Spolsky promotes his curated anthology 'The Best Software Writing I' by sharing positive early reviews and highlighting the diverse range of essays included. He emphasizes the book's breadth by juxtaposing contrasting pieces that address similar themes from different angles — humor alongside serious analysis, technical arguments alongside cultural criticism. The post serves as both a promotional piece and a sampler of the book's contents, name-dropping contributors like Adam Bosworth, Bruce Eckel, danah boyd, and Clay Shirky. Spolsky closes with a lighthearted pitch for the physical book format over reading online.

Introduction to Best Software Writing I

Joel Spolsky introduces his anthology 'The Best Software Writing I' by making a passionate case for better writing in the software industry. He illustrates the power of storytelling through a New York City anecdote and a military leadership story, contrasting vivid narrative with dry, abstract advice. He recounts refusing to endorse a book that was technically correct but fatally boring because it violated the 'show, don't tell' rule. The piece argues that software writing suffers from broken ESL, faux-academic pretentiousness, and a complete absence of narrative, and positions the anthology as a corrective showcase of genuinely good writing about software.

News

Joel Spolsky announces his curated anthology 'The Best Software Writing I' by lamenting the poor state of software development writing. He criticizes overly long technical books written by committees in broken English, pretentious academic texts about object-oriented design, and low-quality online commentary. The post serves as both a promotional announcement and a manifesto for better technical writing. Joel positions his anthology as the antidote, promising 29 pieces of brilliant, insightful, and funny writing about software.

News

Joel Spolsky discusses Microsoft's recruiting challenges, responding to a Microsoft recruiter's candid admission that hiring managers don't understand the competitive talent landscape. He argues that solving recruiting problems requires CEO-level structural changes—like opening offices in desirable cities, spinning off divisions into startup-like units, and giving employees meaningful equity—not just better recruiting tactics. He draws a parallel to Seth Godin's point that marketing is the CEO's job, arguing recruiting is too. The post also touches on his email bankruptcy and Project Aardvark's progress.

News

This post covers two unrelated topics: Microsoft's recruiting challenges and Fog Creek's network load balancing setup. On recruiting, Spolsky argues that Microsoft's problems attracting talent stem from executive-level decisions — stagnant products, bloated headcount, benefit cuts, and poor developer experience — not from recruiter competence. On the technical side, he describes successfully using Windows Server 2003's built-in Network Load Balancing to apply patches to his web farm with zero downtime, preferring it over hardware load balancers for its lack of a single point of failure.

News

This is an extremely brief news post where Joel links to a blog entry from one of his summer interns working on Project Aardvark. The intern describes putting network handshaking code inside a taskbar icon class and tries to justify the decision. Joel's entire commentary is a single sarcastic 'Riiight,' expressing amused skepticism at the intern's architectural choice.

News

This is a brief news post from Joel Spolsky sharing a quote from Benjamin Pollack about encountering an Internal Compiler Error when trying to build a project that claimed to work fine with Visual Studio .NET 2003. The post also includes a promotional reminder about FogBugz 4.0 introductory pricing ending that day.

News

This is a brief news post linking to a Project Aardvark blog entry by an intern discussing their initial impressions of C#. The linked post describes approaching C# with low expectations based on prior experience with Microsoft languages like Visual Basic, while expressing a preference for dynamic languages like Squeak Smalltalk and Ruby. The post is essentially a signal boost for the Project Aardvark intern blog rather than containing original analysis from Spolsky.

News

This is a brief product announcement post where Joel Spolsky announces that FogBugz 4.0 is now available for Unix and Macintosh platforms. The post consists of a single sentence with a link to the product's what's-new page. It signals Fog Creek's expansion beyond Windows-only support. There is no argument or analysis — it is purely a news update.

News

This is a brief news post with two items. First, Joel shares a podcast interview with Dan Bricklin (co-creator of VisiCalc) covering topics like GPL compliance, open source economics, and copyright awareness among developers. Second, Joel shares a short anecdote about being warned about a Wall Street bond scam by his friend Jared, only to fall for it himself shortly after.

News

This is a brief announcement post where Joel congratulates former intern Ben Kamens on graduating and promotes his upcoming cross-country bicycle trip for charity. Joel mentions that Kamens has built a text-message-map-gateway to track the trip's progress. The post is essentially a personal shout-out rather than a substantive essay.

Making Wrong Code Look Wrong

Spolsky argues that the highest level of programming skill is deliberately architecting code so that bugs are visually obvious during normal reading. Using a bakery cleanliness analogy, he shows how experienced programmers develop eyes for 'dirty' code, then demonstrates with a web security (XSS) example how naming conventions—specifically Apps Hungarian notation—can make wrong code look wrong on every single line. He rehabilitates Hungarian notation by distinguishing Simonyi's original 'Apps Hungarian' (semantic prefixes like 'us' for unsafe string) from the widely-despised 'Systems Hungarian' (type prefixes like 'dw' for double word), arguing the former was misunderstood and discarded along with the latter. He also critiques exceptions as violating the principle of collocation—keeping all relevant information visible in one place.

News

This brief post serves as a teaser for Joel's longer essay 'Making Wrong Code Look Wrong.' It consists entirely of a single extended quote from that essay, humorously describing the futile cycle of trying to enforce coding conventions on a team. The passage captures how developers spiral from recognizing inconsistency into bikeshedding arguments, then into unauthorized refactoring, then into managerial scolding, and finally into compromised half-measures before moving on to the next irrelevant obsession.

News

Joel Spolsky announces several pieces of Fog Creek news, primarily that a documentary filmmaker will be embedded in their office to film their summer internship program. Four interns selected from over 800 applicants will build a complete software product from concept to paying customers in about ten weeks. The work is divided into three programming chunks and one product marketing role, with the product being something Fog Creek needs internally. Joel frames the project as inexpensive market research that doubles as a real product development effort.

News

Joel Spolsky enthusiastically reviews VMware Workstation 5.0, highlighting its new snapshot tree feature as a major advancement for software testing. He explains how the ability to create branching snapshots with different configurations saves disk space and dramatically speeds up testing workflows. Using FogBugz as an example, he demonstrates how VMware enables testing prerequisite detection code and upgrade paths by quickly reverting to known states. He also notes VMware's role in cross-platform Linux testing and describes Fog Creek's hardware setup for intern projects requiring multi-machine environments.

News

This is a brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky promotes two upcoming speeches at CFUNITED, a ColdFusion conference. The first talk will be a keynote about why great products like the iPod succeed despite being more expensive and less capable than competitors. The second talk covers project management using his 'Joel Test' framework, with a demo of FogBugz 4.0. The post is essentially a conference promotion with minimal substantive content.

News

This is an extremely brief link-sharing post where Joel Spolsky shares a link to JunkFax.org warning that Congress is about to legalize junk faxes with opt-out provisions, similar to what was done with spam legislation. The post contains no original analysis or argument, serving purely as a signal boost for the linked advocacy site. It reflects Joel's practice of using his blog platform to occasionally share news items he found noteworthy or concerning.

News

Joel Spolsky shares a brief testimonial from Eric J. Smith, who discovered through reading about FogBugz that it could handle all of his product management needs for CodeSmith. The post serves as a quick endorsement highlighting the marketing value of having quality written content about your product.

News

Joel Spolsky announces a new job posting discussion group on his website. The group is framed as an experiment in online discussion forums, with the guiding principle that quality of job postings matters more than quantity. This is a brief announcement post with minimal elaboration.

News

This is a minimal announcement post from April 1, 2005, directing readers to the conclusion of Joel's 'The Road to FogBugz' series. The post contains virtually no substantive content of its own, serving purely as a link to another article. At only 9 words, it functions as a blog-era equivalent of a tweet or status update.

The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part V

Joel Spolsky recounts the launch of FogBugz 4.0 for Windows on February 23, 2005, after deciding not to hold up the Windows release for the Unix version. Despite expecting to relax after shipping, he was immediately overwhelmed by tripled sales, lit-up phone lines, and a flood of inquiries. He reflects on the lesson that shipping software is the beginning of the work, not the end. The post also surveys Fog Creek's growing plate of responsibilities: large enterprise customers wanting customizations, server infrastructure upgrades, an ambitious summer internship program to build a product from scratch (with a documentary crew filming), and urgent hiring needs.

News

This is a very brief news post linking to Part Four of a series about FogBugz development. The sole substantive claim is a striking statistic: only 2% of Fog Creek's total effort goes into writing new code that ships to customers. The post uses this dramatic ratio to draw readers into the longer article about the realities of software product development.

The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part IV

Joel Spolsky breaks down the energy expenditure of shipping commercial software, arguing that writing code is only about 2% of the total effort. The bulk goes to customer service, debugging, marketing, and hiring. He details the non-code work required to launch FogBugz 4.0, including professional graphic design, an online demo, a product movie, a marketing website, a published book, and physical CD-ROMs. The post illustrates how consumers evaluate products based on superficial signals like aesthetics, reputation, and tangible artifacts rather than the software itself. Spolsky argues this explains both why programmer-founded companies often fail and why expensive shelfware succeeds.

News

Joel briefly announces that Fog Creek built a compiler to automatically convert FogBugz's ASP source code to PHP, enabling the product to run on Unix in addition to Windows. Rather than maintaining two separate codebases or doing a manual one-time port, they chose to build an automated translation tool. The post serves as a teaser directing readers to a longer article detailing this technical approach.

The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part III

Joel describes the creation of Thistle, Fog Creek's ASP-to-PHP compiler, built to produce a Unix version of FogBugz from their existing Windows/ASP codebase. A summer intern named Jimmy prototyped the compiler in Java, which lexes, parses, and generates PHP from VBScript/ASP source code. Joel explains why Thistle is a true compiler (not a translator or regex hack), defends Hungarian notation as a coding convention that enabled key compiler optimizations, and argues the effort was worthwhile despite Unix sales being only 10% of revenue. The post also details how they handled COM objects and runtime libraries through reimplementation.

News

Joel Spolsky briefly announces two new FogBugz 4.0 features — Bayesian spam filtering and a 'snippets' feature for canned responses — that emerged from Fog Creek's internal use of their own product for handling company email. The post serves as a teaser directing readers to a longer article about the FogBugz 4.0 development process.

The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part II

Spolsky describes two features added to FogBugz 4.0 that emerged from using their own product. First, after discovering that human operators were incorrectly marking real customer emails as spam at a higher rate than Bayesian filters would, they implemented client-side Bayesian filtering directly in FogBugz, then generalized it to automatically sort incoming email into categories. Second, after noticing that terse customer service replies were perceived as rude, they built a 'snippets' feature for inserting canned text fragments to produce warmer, more polished responses efficiently.

News

This is a brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky introduces a five-part series covering the development of FogBugz 4.0. He teases that the first installment will discuss major features added based on customer feedback. The post highlights Fog Creek's philosophy of prioritizing customer input over competitor analysis. It's essentially a table of contents entry rather than a substantive essay.

News

This is a very brief news post where Joel Spolsky shares links to four reviews of his talk at the O'Reilly Etech conference, noting that the reviews ranged from 'off topic' to 'a bit fluffy.' He also promotes a pizza and beer reception at Apress in Berkeley. The post is essentially a quick link roundup with no substantive argument or analysis.

News

This is a very brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky shares two pieces of news: FogBugz 3.1 won a Jolt Award in the Defect Tracking Tools category, and his book 'Joel on Software' won a Productivity Award. The post is essentially a celebration of these achievements with no substantive argument or analysis.

News

Spolsky discusses the problems Microsoft created by breaking backward compatibility in the transition from VB6 to VB.NET. He recounts his own 1992 attempt to convince the VBA team to remove the Set statement and default properties, noting they rightly refused to break existing code. He argues that when VB.NET forced breaking changes on developers with large codebases, it created a painful dilemma: spend money just to stand still, or consider abandoning the platform entirely. The post suggests Microsoft's strategy of successive breaking changes (VB to VB.NET to WinForms to Avalon) drove developers to seek more stable alternatives.

News

Joel briefly comments on Microsoft's VB.NET breaking changes that alienated VB6 developers, linking to a petition against the changes. He quotes himself from an eWeek article warning that such incompatibilities could erode Microsoft's desktop monopoly. However, he then issues a correction admitting his specific example about short-circuit boolean evaluation was wrong — VB.NET's And/Or operators were not actually changed to short-circuit. He acknowledges real incompatibilities exist but concedes his cited example wasn't one of them.

News

This is a short announcement post where Joel Spolsky promotes three upcoming appearances in mid-March 2005: a speech at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego, a fireside chat at Software Development West in Silicon Valley, and a pizza and beer reception hosted by Apress in Berkeley. He jokes about his reputation for going off-topic during speeches and humorously describes the uncertain actual content of his talk. The post is essentially a personal events calendar with Joel's characteristic informal humor.

News

Joel Spolsky shares a brief update about Fog Creek's operations, noting they've been busy adding physical product shipping capabilities to their online store to sell a FogBugz book. The irony is that they originally built their own store because off-the-shelf e-commerce solutions were too focused on physical delivery, and now they're retrofitting that very functionality. He reflects on the variety of work at a software startup and teases an upcoming series about FogBugz 4.0 development.

News

Joel announces that FogBugz 4.0 shipped on its planned date after months of work. He notes that the release consumed his attention and he'll be catching up on other things. The caveat is that only the Windows version shipped on time, with Unix and Mac versions still in beta.

News

Spolsky critiques Microsoft AntiSpyware on two fronts: a usability blunder where the UI displays 'Detected Spyware on Your System' as a heading before any results have loaded, and the broader strategic problem of Microsoft giving away free antispyware software. He argues the empty-list display reveals classic programmer thinking that confuses users, and that Microsoft's decision to make the product free will destroy the existing antispyware industry while creating a monopoly product plagued by conflicts of interest with companies like Real Networks and media conglomerates.

News

This is a brief news post where Joel Spolsky shares a quote from Jamie Zawinski (jwz) about groupware software design. Zawinski argues that software should be designed around the most visceral, immediate human motivation rather than abstract enterprise use cases. The post is essentially a signal boost for Zawinski's provocative take on product design philosophy.

News

Joel shares a brief quote from Katie Lucas that satirizes software development methodologies by comparing them to a running race. The quote reduces methodology to absurdly simple steps, implying that most of the ceremony around software processes is unnecessary overhead. The core message is that no amount of planning, preparation, or methodology can substitute for simply being good at the actual work.

Foreword to Painless Project Management with FogBugz, by Mike Gunderloy

Spolsky uses the analogy of a perpetually packed Manhattan restaurant called Isabella's to argue that great software succeeds not through brilliant features but through being 'deeply debugged.' Isabella's thrives despite mediocre food because in ten years of patronage, nothing ever went wrong — every edge case in the dining experience was handled. He extends this to software development, arguing that bug tracking databases are not just scheduling tools but the essential mechanism that makes great software possible. By systematically capturing and fixing every flaw, misunderstanding, and edge case, software evolves from merely functional to truly reliable.

News

Joel Spolsky announces the arrival of Mike Gunderloy's new book 'Painless Project Management with FogBugz' at the Fog Creek office. He notes that FogBugz 4.0, which the book covers, will be available for sale by March 1st. Fog Creek plans to sell the book through their online store, marking their first physical inventory item.

Colo Expansion Version 2.0

Joel Spolsky documents his real-time planning process for expanding Fog Creek's colocation server infrastructure from a single Dell 2650 to a six-server setup with redundancy and scalability. He outlines the key problems driving the upgrade: insufficient capacity for FogBugz online trials, the need to switch from Windows to Linux email, eliminating single points of hardware failure, and building a scalable architecture. The post takes an unusual 'live article' format where he publishes his plan before implementation, soliciting reader feedback and updating the post with their suggestions. He details the specific hardware choices (Dell PowerEdge 2850s), network architecture with separate segments, and open questions about power management, remote control, and RAID compatibility with Unix. The total project budget is around $20K, reflecting Fog Creek's growth from scrappy startup to a company that can afford professional infrastructure.

News

Joel Spolsky announces a major server infrastructure upgrade from one server to six at a colocation facility. Rather than following his usual pattern of documenting the process after completion, he plans to write about it in real-time as a 'live' article. This approach allows readers to offer suggestions and share experience before decisions are finalized, rather than sending feedback that arrives too late to be useful.

News

Spolsky dismantles the common claim among software companies that they 'only hire the top 1%' by exposing a statistical fallacy. He argues that when you reject 199 out of 200 applicants, the 199 rejected candidates don't disappear—they reapply elsewhere, inflating every company's rejection ratio. The best developers rarely appear on the job market because they're already employed and well-compensated. This means the applicant pool is heavily skewed toward a recurring population of unqualified candidates, making selectivity ratios meaningless as a quality metric. Spolsky concludes that companies must proactively seek out top talent rather than passively filtering resumes, which is why Fog Creek aggressively recruits summer interns before they leave the open market.

News

This is a very brief personal update post rather than a substantive essay. Joel comments humorously on Seattle's weather culture, noting the irony of local newspapers treating rain as headline news in a city famous for rain. He also announces an upcoming Joel on Software community lunch meetup in Toronto.

News

This is a brief logistical announcement reminding readers about a Joel on Software community dinner meetup in Bellevue, Washington. The post provides the time and location for the event at Crossroads Mall's food court. It contains no substantive technical or editorial content.

News

Joel Spolsky introduces his college advice article with a self-deprecating preamble about the unreliability of career advice from older generations in computer science. He notes that college students wisely ignore their elders, whose predictions about technology careers tend to be wildly wrong. He then admits he's equally unqualified to give such advice but proceeds anyway.

News

This is an extremely brief holiday post from December 25, 2004, consisting of nothing more than a link to Paul Auster's 'Auggie Wren's Christmas Story' and a note that it inspired the movie Smoke. At only 14 words, it's essentially a Christmas Day link share rather than a substantive blog post. There is no argument, analysis, or original commentary offered.

News

This is a brief news update post marking the fifth anniversary of Joel on Software and sharing miscellaneous announcements. Joel links to PHP upgrade instructions for FogBugz users dealing with a security flaw, mentions a job opening for an office manager at Fog Creek Software, and promotes their summer internship program. The post is a lightweight holiday-season roundup rather than an essay or argument.

News

Joel comments on the new FASB accounting rule requiring companies to expense stock options from reported profits starting mid-2005. He dismisses the Silicon Valley objection that stock options are too difficult to value, arguing that accounting routinely handles illiquid assets with uncertain valuations. The post is brief but takes a clear stance in favor of the new expensing requirement, positioning it as basic financial accountability rather than a controversial burden.

News

This brief post excerpts a key passage from Joel Spolsky's longer essay 'Camels and Rubber Duckies' about software pricing strategy. The core argument is that pricing is a signal, not just a number — it communicates perceived quality to customers. Spolsky argues that pricing your product in the middle of competitors' range signals mediocrity, while pricing significantly higher signals premium quality. The post serves as a teaser linking to the full essay on pricing psychology.

News

Joel discusses several topics: seasonal affective disorder as a likely cause of programmer malaise, a usability bug in Google Suggest, and a court ruling on competitor advertising via Google search. His central argument is that Google Suggest, despite its bugs, represents a paradigm shift in web user expectations — users will soon demand responsive, AJAX-style interfaces instead of tolerating full-page reloads. He frames this as 'raising the bar' for all web applications.

News

This is a brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky invites readers to upcoming informal dinner and lunch meetups in Bellevue, WA and Toronto. He asks attendees to RSVP for headcount purposes. The post highlights the community aspect of the Joel on Software blog, where readers could meet in person. There is no substantive technical or editorial content in this post.

News

Joel highlights Google Suggest as a groundbreaking web interface innovation. He notes it uses the XmlHttpRequest technique to fetch data from the server without reloading the page, a capability that existed but was largely ignored by web developers. He argues that the latency of traditional web UIs, which require full page reloads for every interaction, makes them feel clunky compared to native applications. Google is publicly raising expectations for what web interfaces should feel like.

News

This is a very brief news post where Joel Spolsky shares a link to an interview he did with Scott Rosenberg for Salon magazine. The post consists of a single sentence and a pull quote from the article that humorously connects software writing to Yiddish humor. It serves primarily as a pointer to external content rather than containing substantive argument or analysis.

News

Spolsky explores the Israeli military concepts of 'rosh katan' (small head) and 'rosh gadol' (big head) as a framework for understanding developer behavior. Rosh katan describes someone who does exactly what they're told and nothing more, while rosh gadol describes someone who takes initiative and does what's needed, not just what's requested. He connects this to the concept of 'work to rule' labor action, where workers follow instructions so literally they become useless. Spolsky then argues that formal software methodologies like MSF inadvertently encourage rosh katan behavior by reducing experienced developers to compliance monkeys focused on process checkboxes rather than outcomes. He illustrates this with concrete examples of bug-fixing behavior, contrasting initiative-taking developers with those who do the bare minimum. The core argument is that methodologies designed to make average teams consistent actually demotivate talented developers by forcing them into rigid processes that ignore individual capability.

News

Spolsky uses the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as a springboard to argue that some concepts are nearly untranslatable between languages, particularly the Hebrew concepts of 'rosh gadol' (big head — taking broad ownership and initiative) and 'rosh katan' (small head — doing only what you're told). He contends that software methodologies like Microsoft Solutions Framework try to codify the behaviors of 'rosh gadol' thinkers into rules that 'rosh katan' people can follow, but this approach is doomed to fail. The post is a concise, playful lament about the inadequacy of English to express this distinction.

News

Joel shares a quick tip about JPEG file bloat, noting that a small image on his site was 42KB but contained nearly 35KB of useless metadata from a photo editing program. He credits Dennis Forbes for providing a utility to strip the unnecessary data, reducing the image to just 7KB. The post is a brief technical note rather than an essay.

News

Joel briefly recaps a seminar he participated in, noting the large audience of 700 people. He felt his segment on social interface design was too short and could have been expanded significantly. He also observes that the Electric Cloud content, while interesting, was thematically disconnected from his own topic, making the overall seminar feel disjointed.

News

Joel Spolsky promotes an upcoming free NetSeminar where he'll present on social software, sponsored by Electric Cloud and hosted by Software Development magazine. He humorously walks through the expected format: his compressed talk, a sponsor demo by tcl creator John Ousterhout, Q&A, and live polls. He transparently discloses the commercial arrangement while genuinely endorsing the sponsor's distributed make technology. The post is essentially a promotional announcement wrapped in Joel's characteristic self-deprecating humor and digressive asides.

News

This is a brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky shares two pieces of news: his book 'Joel on Software' was named one of Amazon's ten best books of 2004 in the Computers and Internet category, and he announces upcoming speaking engagements at two California conferences in March 2005.

News

This is a brief news roundup post where Joel Spolsky shares links about bootstrapping businesses without venture capital, promotes his book project collecting the best software essays of 2004, and advertises summer internships at Fog Creek Software. The post reinforces Joel's well-known skepticism of venture capital by linking to resources about avoiding VCs and bootstrapping. It also serves as a call to action for readers to participate in nominating essays and to refer talented interns.

News

This is an extremely brief post consisting of a single Windows UI tip. Joel shares that pressing Ctrl+C while a Windows popup error message box is displayed copies its text to the clipboard. There is no argument or analysis — it is purely a quick productivity tip shared with readers.

News

Joel Spolsky announces two updates: a new off-topic discussion group for political conversations (to keep the main forum focused on software), and progress on FogBugz 4.0. He explains his writing hiatus by noting that shipping FogBugz 4.0 has taken priority over blog essays. He highlights the team behind the release, including designer Dave Shea, writer Mike Gunderloy, and tester Jill McFarlane, framing it as proof that investing in great people pays off.

News

This is an extremely brief post from Election Day 2004, consisting of just three words urging readers to go vote. Joel Spolsky steps entirely outside his usual software development topics to make a simple civic appeal. The post contains no technical content, argument, or analysis whatsoever. It reflects the cultural moment of the 2004 U.S. presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry.

News

This is a short news-style post covering two unrelated topics. First, Joel highlights Eric Meyer's S5 slide show system built entirely on web standards (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript) as a free alternative to PowerPoint, noting that a CityDesk template makes it even easier to use. Second, he describes an intermittent IIS 6.0 bug he struggled with, which turned out to be a COM+ application identity issue where the IWAM account needed to be changed. The post is characteristic of Joel's blog style of mixing product promotion with technical problem-solving.

News

Joel analyzes Ipswitch's failed pricing strategy for their IMail email server, where the company tried to move upmarket to compete with Microsoft Exchange by adding collaboration features and raising prices. He argues they made two fundamental mistakes: underestimating Microsoft's ability to charge more simply by being the market leader, and misframing the value equation by hoping customers would compare their new prices to Exchange rather than to their own previous pricing. Joel uses this as a case study in software pricing psychology, explaining that perceived value is always relative to a baseline comparison. He concludes that small companies should never compete on price against larger rivals who have inherent cost advantages.

News

Joel Spolsky shares a brief update post covering two topics: his new book project collecting the best software essays of 2004, and the progress on FogBugz 4.0. He solicits nominations for essays to include in the book, with a November deadline. He also discusses the company's focus on shipping FogBugz 4.0, noting their philosophy of listening to customers over competitors. The post ends with a humorous reflection on regretting the FogBugz name but accepting it as too established to change.

News

This is a brief news update post where Joel Spolsky shares links to three recent interviews he gave. He was interviewed by Doug Kaye for IT Conversations (audio), by Dave Walker for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (with an extended version online), and by Mary Jo Foley for Microsoft Watch. The post is purely informational with no substantive argument or analysis.

News

This post covers three unrelated topics: a link to Rands' piece on completionist vs incrementalist mindsets in software development, Dan Appleman's skepticism about Microsoft's long-term commitment to Windows Forms, and a detailed update on improvements to Joel's discussion group software. The bulk of the post describes new features including full-text search powered by SQL Server, an RSS feed with bandwidth trade-offs, and a Bayesian spam filter inspired by Paul Graham's work. Joel outlines three public anti-spam strategies and hints at undisclosed ones, noting that revealing all countermeasures would help spammers circumvent them. The post reflects the mid-2000s battle against comment spam as spammers shifted from email to web forums to game Google rankings.

News

This is a brief memorial post published on September 11, 2004, the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Joel Spolsky, based in New York City, posted a simple link to a memorial page. The post contains no analysis or argument — it is a solemn acknowledgment of the date's significance. Its brevity is itself the statement.

It’s Not Just Usability

Spolsky argues that while usability matters at the margins, it's not the most important factor in software success — applications that solve real problems succeed despite poor UI, while perfectly usable but pointless software flops. He introduces the concept of 'social interface design' as the next frontier beyond traditional usability, focusing on how software mediates human-to-human interaction. Using examples like Napster, text messaging, eBay, and Usenet, he shows how small software design decisions profoundly shape social behavior and community dynamics. He argues that social interface design requires thinking like an anthropologist rather than a usability engineer, optimizing for the health of the community rather than individual user success. Spolsky predicts this will become a distinct discipline, much as UI design emerged from ergonomics.

News

This brief news post highlights two topics: Joel's latest article about social interfaces in software, and a community resource about workspace quality for developers. The main intellectual contribution is the argument that internet software has shifted from human-computer interaction to human-human interaction, making social interface design more critical than traditional usability. Joel asserts that even perfect UI cannot compensate for poor social dynamics in software. The workspace link reinforces his ongoing advocacy for quality developer work environments.

News

Joel Spolsky announces that Eric Sink will host a new Business of Software forum on Joel's discussion site. The brief post serves primarily as an introduction to Eric Sink's credentials, highlighting his extensive career including building the Spyglass web browser, founding the AbiWord project, and running SourceGear. Joel positions Sink as uniquely qualified due to his deep industry experience and generous knowledge-sharing about the software business.

News

Joel announces the beta launch of a new discussion group for his website, acknowledging known bugs and missing features like search. The post highlights backend improvements focused on spam prevention and administrative tools. He notes that users can now link their websites to their posts, though the links won't pass PageRank to prevent abuse. The main value proposition is reduced spam and easier creation of new discussion groups in the future.

News

Joel announces the creation of new sub-forums for the Joel on Software discussion group, which had grown too large for productive conversation. He draws a parallel to Usenet's historical tendency to fork newsgroups as they grew, noting his general aversion to forking because it dilutes discussion quality. Despite this, he concedes the practical necessity of splitting into topic-focused groups. He also briefly promotes the second printing of his book.

News

Spolsky highlights that Microsoft followed the approach he predicted months earlier, making Avalon available as standalone libraries for existing Windows versions rather than requiring users to upgrade to Longhorn. He frames this as a vindication of Raymond Chen's pragmatic philosophy over the marketing-driven approach of forcing OS upgrades. The post also briefly mentions work on discussion group software with a small but potentially significant feature allowing users to link their names to URLs.

News

Joel Spolsky responds to a Microsoft employee who took his 'How Microsoft Lost the API War' article to heart, agreeing that Microsoft's culture of constant paradigm shifts hurts developers. Dare Obasanjo criticized Microsoft's tendency to introduce radically new technologies rather than improving existing ones, echoing Joel's concerns. Joel then makes a candid confession: he delayed publishing his original article because he feared Microsoft might actually listen to his advice. He admits that while as a developer he'd prefer Microsoft to maintain backward compatibility, as a competitor he benefits from Microsoft's self-destructive tendencies.

News

Joel Spolsky announces the publication of his second book, a 'best of' collection of 45 articles from his Joel on Software blog. He humorously describes the book's absurdly long official title and pitches it as useful for winning arguments with colleagues by physical force. He notes some misplaced Amazon reviews and asks readers to write accurate ones. The post includes brief postscripts about the book hitting #1 on Amazon in Computers, a reader dinner in Rome, and an unrelated observation about manual vs. automatic transmissions.

News

Spolsky recommends 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time' by Mark Haddon, a novel narrated by a fifteen-year-old boy with Asperger's Syndrome. He draws a connection between the character's hyper-logical thinking and the mindset common among programmers and mathematicians. The post uses excerpts from the book to illustrate how extreme literalism and logical reasoning can make everyday human interactions bewildering. Spolsky finds the book both funny and insightful, and warns readers they won't be able to put it down.

News

Joel Spolsky announces his annual family vacation to Umbria, Italy and organizes an informal dinner meetup in Rome for readers passing through on August 16th, 2004. He provides logistics for meeting at the Aleph Hotel lobby at 8 PM, noting the challenge of finding open restaurants in Rome during August. The post is a brief, casual announcement typical of early blogging culture, where popular bloggers would organize impromptu reader meetups while traveling.

News

In this brief link post, Joel Spolsky endorses Eric Sink's argument that small independent software vendors should focus on hiring solid professionals rather than chasing 'great hackers.' He also recommends Johanna Rothman's upcoming book on hiring technical talent, noting it covers an underserved topic. The post reflects Joel's pragmatic approach to building software teams.

News

This is a brief news post where Joel Spolsky shares a feature about Fog Creek Software published on SoftwareCEO.com. The external article highlights Spolsky's contrarian approach to running a software company, noting that he challenges conventional wisdom in the industry. Joel quotes the flattering description and urges readers to check it out before it goes behind a paywall.

News

This is a brief news post with two unrelated items. Joel announces a community dinner meetup in Rome for August 2004, continuing a tradition of reader gatherings in various cities. He then shares a quote from RFC 3117 about how Postel's robustness principle paradoxically causes deployment problems, since liberal acceptance of errors masks bugs in new implementations until they encounter stricter systems.

News

This is an extremely brief news blurb noting that Microsoft featured Lookout (a search tool) on their platform, with a quick correction that it was actually on MSN Sandbox rather than the Download Center. The post captures a minor industry moment with minimal commentary.

News

Spolsky criticizes Microsoft's acquisition of Lookout, a popular Outlook search plugin that solved one of Outlook's biggest weaknesses. After the acquisition, Microsoft pulled Lookout from download and announced its technology would be folded into MSN search services rather than improving Outlook. Spolsky questions why Microsoft would buy a product that fixes their email client's search and then kill it without integrating it. He invokes Hanlon's Razor to suggest stupidity over malice. An update reveals the likely explanation: Lookout used an open-source search component Microsoft couldn't redistribute, making it essentially an 'HR acquisition' to hire the developers.

News

Joel Spolsky announces that his second book is heading to the printer. The book is primarily a collection of reprinted articles from his blog over the previous four years. He humorously lists three advantages of the physical book format over reading online: professional editing, not having to read on a computer, and the ability to physically throw it at coworkers to make a point.

News

This short link roundup post from mid-2004 curates several conversations happening across the web about the future of web applications and browser standards. Spolsky highlights voices calling for incremental improvement of web standards with IE compatibility, early AJAX-like frameworks, and the tension between rich client experiences and web-based apps. The post captures a pivotal moment just before the AJAX revolution, when developers were actively debating how to make web apps feel like desktop software. It closes with a humorous note about extending SysAdmin Week to a fortnight.

News

Joel describes his sysadmin week spent upgrading infrastructure for Joel on Software. He visited Peer 1 Networks' colocation facility to install a hot backup server alongside the main one, which had been running for a year and a half with only Windows Update-related downtime. He plans to set up replication using robocopy and SQL log shipping for near-zero-downtime failover. The post also notes Peer 1's rapid growth from 20% to 90% capacity in their data center.

News

Spolsky calls on web application developers to start demanding browser features that support rich application development, now that graphic designers have gotten their CSS wish list fulfilled. He outlines a detailed list of features he wants to see in browsers, including inline editing, fast asynchronous server queries, standard UI controls, compiled JavaScript, and richer event handling. He explicitly rejects proprietary plugin-based solutions like Java Applets and Macromedia, insisting that improvements must be deeply integrated with DHTML and CSS. He also demands graceful degradation for legacy browsers and dismisses schemes requiring mass user adoption of new plugins. The post is remarkably prescient, essentially describing what would become AJAX, HTML5, and modern web APIs years before they materialized. Spolsky frames this as the application developers' turn to shape the web platform after designers had their era.

News

This is a very brief teaser post that serves as a promotional link to Joel Spolsky's longer essay 'How Microsoft Lost the API War.' The post consists of a single provocative quote from the essay describing two opposing forces within Microsoft, framed as 'The Raymond Chen Camp' and 'The MSDN Magazine Camp.' It functions as a hook to drive readers to the full article rather than presenting a standalone argument.

News

Joel Spolsky enthusiastically recommends Firefox 0.9 as a replacement for Internet Explorer. He argues that Firefox offers superior security through popup blocking, better usability through tabbed browsing, and represents a chance to break Microsoft's browser monopoly. He acknowledges Microsoft won the browser market fairly by making a better product, but criticizes them for stagnating IE development out of fear that web applications would undermine Windows.

How Microsoft Lost the API War

Spolsky argues that Microsoft's most important strategic asset — the Windows API — has become irrelevant, not because of Linux on the desktop, but because developers have migrated to web applications. He traces how Microsoft's internal culture shifted from the 'Raymond Chen Camp' of fanatical backwards compatibility to the 'MSDN Magazine Camp' of constant reinvention (.NET, WinFX, Avalon), alienating developers who couldn't keep up. Meanwhile, web applications reached 'good enough' UI quality, eliminating the need for Windows-specific development. The result is that the new dominant API is HTML, and Microsoft's lock-in through its platform has been broken by the web, not by a competing desktop OS.

News

In this extremely brief post, Joel Spolsky makes a self-deprecating observation about software developers' lack of self-awareness regarding their own knowledge gaps. He sets up the joke by asking what drives him crazy, acknowledges his reputation for being easily irritated, then delivers the punchline: most developers don't realize how little they know. He closes by pointing to himself as an example, linking to a book review.

News

Joel Spolsky argues against perfectionism in software development and business, using the humorous example of obsessing over perfectly formatted HTML as an illustration of diminishing returns. He contends that perfectionism about one thing necessarily means neglecting something more valuable, and that decisions should always be framed in terms of cost-benefit tradeoffs rather than absolute yes-or-no questions. The post also highlights how his views on exceptions and measurement align with Microsoft bloggers Raymond Chen and Larry Osterman, and playfully credits Dave Winer's blogging evangelism as a brilliant 'Fire and Motion' strategy that has Microsoft employees blogging instead of working.

News

This post is a collection of short updates covering four topics. Spolsky discusses using CityDesk's development build to edit his own blog ('eating your own dogfood'), reflects on how his widely-read interview advice has made candidates game his specific techniques, draws a fascinating parallel between email viruses and Darwinian evolution through memetics, and recommends Rick Chapman's software marketing book while noting some of its content is aging.

25

Spolsky argues that the impedance mismatch between modern programming languages and relational databases is a fundamental flaw in language design. He observes that virtually every modern language treats database access as a library concern rather than a first-class language feature, forcing developers to hand-roll error-prone mappings between native data structures and database rows. He draws an analogy to C++'s decision not to include a native string type, which led to a proliferation of incompatible string implementations. He calls for language designers to acknowledge that RDBMS access is intrinsic to modern applications and build it into the language syntax directly.

04

This is a brief announcement post rather than an essay. Joel Spolsky invites readers to an open house event at Fog Creek Software's new office in New York City. The post consists of just the date, time, and address. It reflects Joel's practice of using his blog for company updates alongside his longer analytical pieces.

02

This is an extremely brief link post where Joel Spolsky shares his article 'Top Twelve Tips for Running a Beta Test.' The post contains no substantive content beyond the link itself, serving purely as a pointer to the full article. It is essentially a blog announcement or cross-reference rather than a standalone piece.

Top Twelve Tips for Running a Beta Test

Joel Spolsky provides twelve practical guidelines for running effective beta tests of shrinkwrap software products. He argues that open betas are ineffective and that structured, application-based beta programs yield far better feedback. The post emphasizes realistic timelines (minimum eight weeks, four releases), the psychology of getting testers to actually submit feedback, and the math behind how many testers you need. He also warns against adding features during beta and distinguishes between technical betas (for finding bugs) and marketing betas (for press and partners).

28

Joel briefly points readers to a discussion thread on his forum about offshoring and outsourcing in software development. Rather than writing his own take, he highlights a community discussion where a poster named Ken sets up an argument about offshoring that is then dismantled by international readers. Joel endorses the crowd-sourced debate as superior to anything he could have written himself.

27

Joel Spolsky curates highlights from his 'Ask Joel' forum, sharing his opinions on a wide range of topics including publishing, Microsoft's program manager role, Lisp, software methodologies, API design, startup costs, and software pricing. The post is a collection of colorful, opinionated snippets rather than a single cohesive argument. Each excerpt showcases Spolsky's signature irreverent style and willingness to deliver blunt takes on industry topics. The selections reveal his pragmatic worldview: that human factors, business realities, and practical constraints matter more than theoretical ideals in software.

20

This grab-bag post covers three topics: Spolsky launching an 'Ask Joel' Q&A forum inspired by Philip Greenspun, a detailed argument about why Microsoft needs to provide a linker for .NET so developers can ship standalone executables, and brief recommendations of blogs and Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby. The linker section is the meat of the post, where Spolsky responds to a Microsoft program manager who dismissed his request. He argues that the security-patching concern is solvable with jump tables and that Microsoft's refusal mirrors Ashton-Tate's fatal mistake of not giving dBase developers a linker, which let FoxPro steal the market. Spolsky concludes that Microsoft has grown so insular they've lost touch with what ISVs actually need.

31

This is an extremely brief post where Joel shares a quote from a blogger named Geodog who attended one of Joel's meetups at a Berkeley cafe. The quote humorously describes how the blogger identified the tech gathering by spotting a table of poorly-dressed males fitting the stereotypical programmer demographic. Joel presents the quote without commentary, letting the self-deprecating humor speak for itself.

30

This is a very brief link-blog post where Joel shares three quick items: a review of one of his speeches, a response to Robert Scoble's 'wait for Longhorn' argument about .NET adoption, and a link to a potential .NET deployment tool. Joel's core point is skepticism about Microsoft's 'it'll be fixed in the next version' promises, predicting enterprise Longhorn adoption won't happen until 2008.

28

Joel Spolsky points out that Microsoft's .NET development environment is missing a linker, a fundamental tool that has been standard in software development since the 1950s. He finds it remarkable that such a basic omission went largely unnoticed. The post is a brief teaser linking to a longer article making this argument. He also humorously notes he's using the German version of CityDesk to publish despite not speaking German.

Please Sir May I Have a Linker?

Joel Spolsky argues that Microsoft's .NET development environment has a critical omission: a linker that can produce standalone executables. Instead, .NET requires a 22 MB runtime to be installed on every user's machine, creating massive friction for software distribution. He illustrates the problem with a story about needing hours of downloads and reboots just to run a simple countdown app on three computers at a New Year's Eve party. For downloadable consumer software like his product CityDesk, requiring users to install the runtime would lose an estimated 95% of prospective customers. He dismisses the argument that runtime adoption will eventually reach critical mass, noting that Microsoft ships new incompatible runtime versions every six to twelve months, resetting adoption to near zero each time.

27

This informal blog post is primarily a collection of announcements, disclaimers, and brief observations. Joel promotes upcoming meetups and lectures, addresses reader reactions to previous posts, and shares advice on resume writing. The core substantive content argues that job applicants should present themselves as human beings rather than lists of technical skills. Joel suggests that telling a personal story in a cover letter creates an emotional connection that makes it harder for hiring managers to dismiss candidates. The post reflects Joel's characteristic blend of community building, humor, and practical career advice.

26

Joel Spolsky briefly promotes his article on resume writing, which advises job seekers to avoid generic, book-copied cover letters. He shares the polarized feedback the article received—some readers found it invaluable career advice while others found it pompous. The post illustrates how direct, opinionated career advice tends to split audiences between those who appreciate bluntness and those who find it condescending.

Getting Your Résumé Read

Joel Spolsky shares his frustrations from reviewing hundreds of internship applications at Fog Creek Software, most of which contain easily avoidable mistakes. He catalogs common errors including poor formatting, generic cover letters, failure to follow application instructions, and lack of basic professionalism. He then offers constructive advice: proofread obsessively, write personalized cover letters, follow directions exactly, and don't mass-apply. His core message is that a résumé's job is to avoid elimination, not to win the job, and the best way to stand out is to come across as a genuine human being rather than a list of skills.

19

Joel Spolsky describes dedicating time to fix neglected system administration issues at Fog Creek Software, focusing on their backup infrastructure. He details their approach of using hard drives instead of tapes for backups, explaining the tools they use (Veritas NetBackup Pro and Dantz Retrospect) with their respective advantages and frustrations. He also notes a cost optimization discovery, switching from expensive Dell SCSI RAID arrays to cheaper LaCie USB drives for backup storage. The post ends with a brief mention of growing Joel on Software meetup groups.

17

Joel briefly promotes the Joel on Software reader meetups organized through Meetup.com, which take place in 640 cities on the third Wednesday of each month. He explains the basic mechanics of how meetups require 5 confirmed members to proceed. He also gives a nod to Meetup.com founder Scott Heiferman, a fellow New Yorker.

13

This is a very brief product announcement post where Joel Spolsky celebrates the launch of FogBUGZ for Unix and Macintosh platforms. The post captures the excitement of shipping a new product with minimal fanfare. It links to the product page and system requirements for all three supported platforms. The closing quip about it being Monday suggests the frenetic energy of a launch day.

31

Joel Spolsky shares a brief New Year's Eve post showing off his DJ setup for a party he's hosting. The post is essentially a gear list describing his professional-grade audio equipment, turntables, and visual effects setup. It reveals Joel's interest in DJing as a hobby and his tendency toward high-end equipment choices. The post is a personal, lighthearted departure from his usual software commentary.

22

Spolsky describes his experience testing FogBUGZ for Unix by installing various Linux and Unix operating systems under VMware. He ranks the installation difficulty of several distributions, finding RedHat 9 easiest and Debian nearly impossible. He notes the fragmentation problem of Unix software distribution, requiring multiple package formats. The post serves as both a practical status update and an implicit critique of Linux's usability and ecosystem fragmentation.

Biculturalism

Spolsky argues that the fundamental difference between Unix and Windows isn't technical but cultural: Unix values code useful to other programmers, while Windows values code useful to end users. He uses Eric S. Raymond's 'The Art of UNIX Programming' as a springboard to explore how these divergent values manifest in everything from command-line output conventions to documentation style. He traces the origins of each culture — Unix emerged when all computer users were programmers, while Windows was built to reach every desktop. Spolsky contends this cultural divide explains why Unix has never succeeded on the desktop, and why Apple succeeded with OS X only by rejecting Unix's programmer-centric norms. He praises Raymond's book for its deep historical insight while criticizing its occasional cultural chauvinism toward Windows.

Craftsmanship

Joel Spolsky argues that writing software is fundamentally a design activity, not manufacturing or even craftsmanship in the traditional sense. He illustrates this through a real example of file import code in CityDesk that went from a simple three-step process to a complex multi-process architecture just to handle the rare case of very large files gracefully. Drawing a parallel to physical construction where misaligned screws are too expensive to fix, he defines software craftsmanship as the willingness to spend 500% more effort to handle the 1% edge cases correctly. He concludes that this level of polish is only economically viable for mass-market software, where the cost can be spread across enough users to justify it.

30

Joel discusses his effort to maintain translations of Joel on Software, noting 264 translations in progress across 32 languages with 242 volunteers. He asks for copy editors in 15 languages to review completed translations before posting. He addresses why translations matter even for a programming blog, arguing that not all programmers are fluent in English and that their non-technical managers may not read English at all. He also demonstrates why machine translation is inadequate by showing a hilariously garbled Google-translated passage.

22

Joel briefly recommends SpamBayes as an effective spam filtering solution, noting it catches over 200 spam emails per day with virtually no false positives. He credits Paul Graham with inventing Bayesian filtering and points readers to open source implementations.

14

Spolsky laments the lack of hard empirical data in software engineering debates, noting that arguments about methodology inevitably devolve into dueling anecdotes. He argues that controlled experiments are essentially impossible because you can't clone teams and conditions. Despite this, he points to Robert L. Glass's 'Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering' as the best available distillation of collective wisdom from fifty years of software development. The book provides sourced facts that can serve as ammunition against uninformed management decisions.

06

Joel Spolsky posts a casual, multi-topic entry covering three unrelated subjects: choosing a DSL provider in New York, designing a reliable web service architecture with geographically distributed SQL Server backups, and recommending a monospaced programming font. On DSL, he's frustrated by the blame game between providers and Verizon and wants to simplify by going direct. On reliability, he outlines a hot-backup scheme using transaction log shipping between servers on opposite coasts. He preemptively deflects any Linux suggestions, admitting he lacks the skills to maintain Linux but can patch Windows easily.

31

Spolsky covers two topics: Fog Creek's solution to blog comment spam by routing URLs through a redirect server to prevent PageRank manipulation, and his impressions from the Microsoft PDC conference. He acknowledges that Microsoft's announced technologies like XAML and WinFS are genuinely impressive, but notes they are vaporware — years from shipping, with predecessors that did similar things long ago. He expresses skepticism that Microsoft will meet its stated timeline.

25

This is a brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky mentions he is heading to Los Angeles for Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC). He invites readers to visit the ASP Today/Apress booth to meet him and other Joel on Software readers, and offers free copies of FogBUGZ. The post lists his booth appearance schedule across three days.

24

Joel highlights Creo Tokens, a new file-sharing tool that simplifies sending large files by creating small token files that can be emailed or instant-messaged. The sender's computer acts as a server, and the recipient downloads a free redeemer app to retrieve the files. Joel praises the product's elegant UI and its handling of edge cases like firewalls and uninitiated recipients. He predicts the tool will become wildly popular for solving the persistent difficulty of transferring large files.

21

This is a brief announcement post with two unrelated items. First, Joel promotes his appearance at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, where he'll be signing books and giving away copies of FogBUGZ at a booth. Second, he shares a Bruce Schneier quote arguing against terror profiling by using the provocative example of flagging all U.S. ex-servicemen as potential terrorists.

17

Joel highlights Microsoft's Empower Program for ISVs, which provides an enormous bundle of development software for just $750, demonstrating Microsoft's commitment to courting developers for the Windows platform. He explains why he initially avoided signing up — Microsoft required disclosure of revenue and employee data, which felt intrusive given their dual role as platform vendor and potential competitor. After raising these concerns through a Microsoft developer evangelist, Microsoft made all the sensitive questions optional for everyone, not just for Joel. The post also briefly links to Ned Batchelder's essay on exceptions vs. status returns and mentions AutomatedQA's TestComplete as a dramatically cheaper alternative to Mercury WinRunner.

15

Spolsky touches on several topics in this short post: the exceptions vs. status returns debate in programming, problematic programmer archetypes, and the nature of design tradeoffs. He challenges Ned Batchelder's abstract defense of exceptions by asking him to use concrete function names like CopyFiles() and MakeRegistryEntries(), implying the argument looks different with real-world examples. He then pivots to his core theme: all design involves imperfect tradeoffs, and debates about the 'right' approach are often religious in nature. He recommends Henry Petroski's book 'Small Things Considered' as an exploration of why no perfect design exists.

14

Joel shares a brief note about handling Unicode in PHP, pointing readers to two approaches: Scott Reynen's manual method using integer arrays and PHP's built-in Multi-Byte String Functions. He notes that despite documentation suggesting the mbstring functions are only for Japanese characters, they actually handle many encodings including Unicode. However, he points out the practical obstacle that mbstring is turned off by default and requires recompiling PHP to enable.

13

Joel Spolsky explains his policy of never throwing exceptions and always catching them immediately at the call site. He argues that exceptions are worse than goto statements because they create invisible, unpredictable jumps through code that leave data in inconsistent states. He advocates for explicit error return values instead, acknowledging the verbosity but arguing it produces more robust code. The post also includes a brief aside about PHP's poor Unicode support, noting that its mbstring extension is confusing and not enabled by default.

10

Joel Spolsky expresses frustration that PHP, a popular web development tool, largely ignores character encoding issues by using only 8 bits for characters, making proper internationalization nearly impossible. He announces a companion article that he considers required reading for all programmers, threatening humorous punishment for anyone who remains ignorant of Unicode and character encoding basics in 2003.

01

This is a brief link post where Joel Spolsky shares a Slashdot review of his book on user interface design. The review praises the book as a great primer for programmers who are intimidated by UI design. The reviewer highlights Spolsky's argument that programmers fear design because they see it as creative rather than logical. The review concludes that Spolsky successfully demonstrates UI design follows logical, learnable principles.

24

Spolsky argues that most software managers understand what good office space looks like but are powerless to achieve it due to long leases and being excluded from space-planning decisions. He highlights the absurdity of software teams being the last consulted about their own work environment. As the founder of his own company, Spolsky announces he has the authority to fix this problem and links to his detailed 'Bionic Office' article describing the solution.

Bionic Office

Joel Spolsky describes the design and construction of Fog Creek Software's new office at 535 8th Avenue in New York, built to his exacting specifications for a software development environment. Working with architect Roy Leone, he prioritized private offices, abundant power outlets, flexible wiring, pair programming support, eye-rest sightlines, and a hangout atmosphere. The office features translucent acrylic walls for privacy with natural light, twenty outlets per desk with UPS-backed power, Snake Tray cable management, straight desks for collaboration, and clever interior windows that give every office three-sided light. Spolsky argues that investing in premium office space at $700/month per employee is justified because it attracts top-tier programming talent, which is essential for competing against lower-cost labor markets.

19

Joel Spolsky reflects on his company's office move and the lessons learned from managing a construction project. He warns against accepting lowball bids from contractors, explaining that unusually low bids signal incompetence, corner-cutting, or plans to overcharge on changes. He then challenges the common software industry claim that construction is a mature field with predictable schedules and budgets, arguing from firsthand experience that construction is just as unpredictable. He teases a future writeup about their architect's design for an ideal programmer workspace.

08

This is a brief link-roundup post where Joel Spolsky promotes a magazine article he wrote about automatically tracking software crashes in the field, shares a quote of his about hiring philosophy that appeared on MSN, and links back to his longer piece on interviewing. The post is essentially a collection of self-promotional pointers rather than a standalone argument.

28

Joel shares a brief reflection on the emotional reward of building shrinkwrap (packaged) software. He expresses that the best part of software development is seeing real people use your product to accomplish meaningful work. He then quotes a user testimonial praising CityDesk, Fog Creek's content management product, as superior to competing tools in power, flexibility, and ease of use.

26

Joel announces the shipping of CityDesk 2.0 as a free upgrade and explains the decision to eliminate the Home Edition. The two-tier pricing experiment (Home and Professional editions) failed because the cheaper version was too cheap to support profitably and frustrated users with artificial limitations. Fog Creek is absorbing the cost of upgrading all Home Edition users to Professional, lowering the Professional price to $299, and introducing a Contributor Edition for team members who only maintain sites. He also promotes demo videos made with Camtasia Studio.

22

Spolsky highlights Raymond Chen's blog series about Windows API history and its hidden complexities. He focuses on the GetWindowText function as a case study in how seemingly simple APIs harbor enormous internal complexity that documentation struggles to convey. Spolsky connects this to his own concept of leaky abstractions, arguing that such hidden complexity is precisely why projects like WINE face near-impossible challenges in achieving full API compatibility. The post also includes an unrelated request for printing recommendations.

21

Joel Spolsky reports that during the major 2003 Northeast blackout, his website and company Fog Creek remained online thanks to their colocation provider Peer 1 Network. While many hosting competitors went down, Peer 1 maintained 100% uptime on backup generators. Joel notes that emergencies are when people first discover flaws in their backup plans, and praises Peer 1 for their reliability.

20

Joel returns from vacation in England and Norway and recommends Petter Hesselberg's book 'Programming Industrial Strength Windows.' He argues it's essential reading for developers building commercial Windows software, as it covers the many small details that collectively determine whether software feels polished or clunky.

08

Joel Spolsky posts a brief vacation notice announcing he'll be away for a couple of weeks. He teases a mystery icon discussion on the Fog Creek forums. He announces that CityDesk 2.0 will be released immediately upon his return. The bulk of the post highlights a pricing loophole where customers can buy the cheap 1.0 Home Edition and receive a free upgrade to the much more expensive 2.0 Pro Edition, saving $270.

02

This short post serves two purposes: announcing a Joel on Software reader dinner in Oslo, Norway, and highlighting the dangers of corporate relocations. Joel draws parallels between Blockbuster's move from Florida to Texas and Boeing's relocation of engineering jobs from California to Texas, noting how both moves resulted in massive loss of institutional knowledge when most employees refused to relocate.

01

This brief post serves as a double announcement. Spolsky teases his foreword to Rick Chapman's book 'In Search of Stupidity,' which explores the tension between technical and business people in tech companies. He also announces the CityDesk 2.0 release candidate, noting its stability after four rounds of beta testing and signaling a gold release within weeks.

Rick Chapman is In Search of Stupidity

Joel Spolsky reviews Rick Chapman's book 'In Search of Stupidity' by examining why Microsoft dominated the PC software industry while every other top-ten company from 1984 disappeared. He argues that Microsoft's dominance wasn't due to superior marketing or illegal monopoly, but rather that Microsoft was the only company that never made a fatal strategic blunder. Spolsky catalogs the self-inflicted wounds of competitors — Micropro, Lotus, Digital Research, VisiCorp, and Ashton-Tate — showing how non-technical leadership led to catastrophic decisions. He concedes that programmers can make equally destructive mistakes, citing Netscape's ground-up rewrite. His conclusion is that successful software companies need leaders who deeply understand both programming and business.

29

This is an extremely brief blog post consisting of three short announcements about Fog Creek Software. Joel mentions a summer intern working on an ASP to PHP compiler, introduces a new support contact for FogBugz, and shows an architect at a construction site for a new office. There is no substantive argument or analysis; it reads as a quick company update or link post.

23

Joel highlights Mailinator, a clever service by Paul Tyma that provides instant disposable email addresses. The service requires no signup — you simply send email to any address @mailinator.com and then check it. Joel uses this as an example of great UI design through simplification, where removing steps (registration, passwords, configuration) creates a better user experience.

17

Spolsky follows up on his previous post about Munich's decision to adopt Linux, noting that reader research revealed the plan actually involves running VMWare with licensed Windows on up to 80% of machines, with most costs going to training and consulting rather than software licenses. He highlights Gartner's analysis that Munich's choice doesn't prove Linux is ready for general desktop use. He also draws an analogy to 1980s telephone deregulation, arguing the real benefit is competitive pressure on Microsoft's pricing, and briefly notes a Slate article about Google's shortcomings in finding unbiased product reviews.

16

Spolsky critiques Munich's decision to replace Windows with Linux on 14,000 desktop computers, arguing that while it may work for basic tasks, it will fail for the many employees who depend on Windows-only software. He points out that Munich uses 175 custom Windows applications that would all need porting, plus commercial software with no Linux equivalent. He predicts that employees will quietly buy Windows at full retail price to get their jobs done, ultimately costing Munich more than a negotiated Microsoft deal would have.

14

Joel Spolsky announces several product updates in a brief 'new stuff' post. He highlights SourceGear's Vault 1.1 shipping with FogBUGZ integration, CityDesk 2.0 reaching its fourth beta with improved HTML generation and hundreds of bug fixes, and a new plasma TV for the Fog Creek office. He outlines a release strategy for CityDesk: a polishing release (2.0) focused on fixing bugs for existing users, followed by a major feature release (3.0) later in the year.

01

This short post combines two unrelated items: a recommendation of Clay Shirky's essay on group dynamics and online communities, and an announcement that Joel has created an experimental Echo (later Atom) feed using CityDesk. The Shirky quote highlights how online community problems are predictable and recurring, yet builders keep repeating the same mistakes. Joel also positions himself as an early adopter of the Echo syndication format, noting its rapidly evolving specification.

20

Spolsky responds to Jason Fried's praise of an OmniWeb dialog box that asks users about permanent redirects. He argues the dialog is unnecessary UI that interrupts users with a technical decision they shouldn't have to make. Since software designers understand permanent redirects better than users, the browser should handle them silently. He contends that developers too often can't resist showing off features instead of making them invisible.

16

This is an ultra-brief post consisting of a single line linking to Salam Pax's photo blog. Salam Pax was the pseudonymous Baghdad Blogger who gained international fame for blogging from Iraq during the 2003 US invasion. Joel simply flags the existence of Salam Pax's new photo blog as a 'scoop' for his readers. There is no argument or analysis — it's a link-sharing post typical of early 2000s blogging culture.

17

This is an extremely brief post where Joel Spolsky asks his readers whether anyone has experience with the IP*Works software components. There is no argument, analysis, or conclusion — it is simply a question posed to the community for discussion. The post consists of a single sentence directing readers to a Fog Creek discussion forum thread.

15

Joel Spolsky shares two brief observations: a warning against believing media narratives that economic downturns are permanent, and detailed advice on writing effective cover letters. He argues that Fortune magazine's claim that job-finding has permanently changed is the same cyclical nonsense as the 'New Economy' hype of the late 1990s. On cover letters, he explains that generic, template-driven letters signal desperation and laziness, while personalized letters that show genuine interest in the specific company signal that the candidate is a top-tier hire with options.

11

This is a minimal job posting announcement for a Support Engineer position at Fog Creek Software. The post contains no substantive argument or analysis, serving purely as a brief hiring notice. The position has since been filled.

07

This is a brief link roundup post where Joel shares several recommendations. He points readers to Steve Pavlina's business tips for shareware developers, notes a compliment about CityDesk from Steven Den Beste, and recommends Ellen Ullman's novel 'The Bug' about a programmer struggling with an elusive software bug. Joel adds a programmer's Easter egg by noting that the novel's critical code actually contains three bugs, not the one the plot focuses on.

05

This is a brief link roundup post where Joel curates reactions and related commentary from other bloggers on topics related to startups, venture capital, and business agreements. He highlights Joi Ito on no-shop agreements, John Ludwig on VC spending advice, Zimran Ahmed on entrepreneurial overconfidence, and Eric Sink on the limitations of VC firms for building lasting companies.

News

This short news post serves as a teaser for Spolsky's essay on why venture capital is a poor fit for entrepreneurship, along with two technical corrections from a previous post. He corrects his characterization of VMware as an emulator (it's actually a virtual machine monitor that runs most instructions on hardware directly), and provides insider context on AOL's decision to use the Gecko rendering engine in their client, driven by management's fear of customer complaints about page rendering.

Fixing Venture Capital

Joel Spolsky argues that venture capital is fundamentally misaligned with the goals of most software entrepreneurs. VCs seek high-risk, high-reward moonshots because they diversify across many investments, while founders prefer higher-probability moderate success since they can't diversify their one company. He explains that VC-funded companies are pressured to grow faster than is healthy, causing imbalances between revenue, hiring, PR, and code quality. Additionally, VCs' filtering process and increasingly harsh deal terms (exploding offers, preferential shares, board control) systematically drive away the smartest founders, leaving VCs with a shrinking pool of desperate or naive companies unlikely to contain the next big success.

News

Joel Spolsky reviews VMware 4.0's new snapshot feature, which allows instant restoration of complete virtual machine states including RAM and disk. He praises the time savings for configuration testing but complains about CMOS changes that broke backward compatibility with existing VMs. The post then pivots to a forward-looking idea: running production servers inside virtual machines. Joel outlines five implications of server virtualization, including instant rollback from security breaches, service isolation without extra hardware, and near-zero-downtime OS upgrades, while acknowledging the CPU overhead cost. He predicts that running servers as VMs will become standard practice for system administrators.

2003/06/01

Spolsky analyzes the browser landscape in mid-2003, noting Microsoft's decision to stop developing Internet Explorer as a standalone product after winning the browser war. He celebrates Mozilla Firebird as the first browser to genuinely catch up with IE, making it his new default browser. He argues that real competition could force Microsoft to improve IE again, potentially creating a two-browser world. He also dissects the AOL-Microsoft settlement, pointing out the irony that AOL owns Netscape but still depends on IE's component architecture because Gecko is too hard to embed, and that only one employee is working on fixing this problem.

2003/05/16

Spolsky argues against software prototypes by recounting two Microsoft cautionary tales. The Excel team spent an entire summer building a drag-and-drop prototype in Visual Basic 1.0, only for the actual feature to take a week to implement. Another team spent a year prototyping what became Microsoft Bob, a legendary flop. He concludes that software prototypes are inherently wasteful: if they replicate full functionality they should just be the product, and if they don't they're useless for real testing. He advocates for paper prototypes as a superior alternative.

2003/04/28

This is a brief link-blog entry where Joel Spolsky shares two items of interest. First, he highlights Eric Sink's analysis of leaky abstractions encountered while building Vault, a source control system in .NET, where Sink favorably compares .NET to Java's reliability in later stages of development. Second, Joel mentions William Poundstone's new book about Microsoft's interview practices and puzzle questions.

2003/04/22

Joel compares coverage of Delta Air Lines' new technology system by two IT publications: InformationWeek and Baseline magazine. He finds InformationWeek's article to be a shallow rewrite of press releases, while Baseline's coverage is detailed and investigative. Notably, Baseline reported a two-hour system crash during a blizzard that InformationWeek ignored entirely. Joel holds up Baseline as an example of what industry press should aspire to and recommends readers get a free subscription.

2003/04/18

Spolsky discusses installation and patching tools for Windows software distribution. He highlights Wise Solutions' installer features that match his wish list from building the FogBUGZ 3.0 installer. He defends the concept of distributing upgrade patches rather than complete files, arguing that modern tools handle edge cases like corrupted files automatically. Despite the appeal of patching technology, he decides to stick with Inno Setup for CityDesk's next release because the bandwidth savings don't justify the switching cost.

2003/04/16

Spolsky makes two observations: first, a humorous jab at the pointless 'conventions used in this document' sections found in every technical manual. Second, he discusses incremental installation tools for software updates, noting that competition from Red Bend Software's vBuild has driven prices down from RTPatch's original $5000, making binary patching more viable for small software companies like Fog Creek.

2003/03/28

Joel briefly mentions William Whyte's research finding that corporate relocations almost always move the company closer to the CEO's home, and that these companies subsequently declined. He uses this as a segue to mention that Fog Creek Software is relocating offices, and he's learned more about commercial real estate than expected. The post is essentially a teaser for a longer article about finding office space in New York City.

Finding an Office in New York City

Joel Spolsky provides an exhaustive practical guide to finding commercial office space in New York City, drawn from his experience relocating Fog Creek Software. He covers the full process from temporary options (executive suites and incubators) through finding permanent space, negotiating leases, and hiring lawyers. He warns that the process takes at least nine months and details the hidden costs, misleading metrics like 'rentable square feet,' and negotiation tactics that tenants should know. The post also touches on William Whyte's research showing that corporate relocations driven by CEO convenience tend to harm company performance.

2003/03/26

Joel briefly describes his experience implementing a picture editor feature using a third-party library (LEADTOOLS). He notes the actual coding took about four hours, but the surrounding work of figuring out deployment dependencies and reading documentation consumed nearly as much additional time. The post is a micro-update reflecting the realities of integrating third-party components into shipping software.

2003/03/24

Joel announces that some of his monthly columns for the Programmer's Paradise catalog are now available online, including reviews of VMWare and ERwin. He explains his policy for writing product reviews: he only reviews tools he actually uses in his daily work at Fog Creek Software. He notes that unlike trade magazine reviewers, he still spends about half his time doing actual software development. The post also briefly mentions upcoming projects including integrating an image editor into CityDesk and signing a lease for new office space.

2003/03/23

Joel announces the addition of bidirectional text support to CityDesk, his content management software. This technical improvement enabled the launch of Hebrew and Farsi editions of Joel on Software. The post highlights the ongoing internationalization effort, bringing the total number of language editions to 24.

2003/03/14

Joel responds to a positive review of FogBUGZ that criticized its lack of customizability. He explains that this was a deliberate design tradeoff: rather than adding features like per-programmer bug count reports that help close sales, they chose to omit features that enable bad management practices. The theory is that happier users become evangelists who recommend FogBUGZ at new jobs, driving long-term growth. He acknowledges this is partly speculation and that design decisions are hard to prove right.

2003/03/07

Joel shares an update about inspecting Fog Creek Software's new office space, a sunny loft in Manhattan's garment district. He describes his vision for the space including private offices, communal areas, and entertainment amenities. The post focuses primarily on his infrastructure demands to the architect, particularly his insistence on abundant power outlets and flexible cabling. It reflects his broader philosophy that developer workspace quality directly impacts productivity.

2003/03/03

Joel announces his latest article 'Building Communities with Software' was sent to email subscribers but many didn't receive it due to overzealous spam filters. Corporate email filters at Fortune 500 companies rejected the message for containing words like 'taboo' and 'hard core.' He offers a 'sanitized version' online while poking fun at the absurdity of content filtering.

Building Communities with Software

Joel Spolsky argues that online community software design decisions profoundly shape the social dynamics and culture that emerge. Drawing on Ray Oldenburg's concept of 'third places' and Robert Putnam's 'Bowling Alone,' he frames online forums as substitutes for vanishing real-world gathering spots, especially for isolated programmers. He examines how specific design choices in platforms like Usenet, IRC, Slashdot, and his own Joel on Software forum either encourage or discourage healthy conversation. Through a detailed Q&A about his forum's deliberately minimalist design, he explains why he avoided features like email notifications, threading, registration, and post confirmation — each omission carefully chosen to foster better community behavior.

2003/02/28

Spolsky draws on Ray Oldenburg's concept of 'third places' and Robert Putnam's 'Bowling Alone' to argue that modern society, especially among software developers, suffers from a critical lack of social gathering spaces. He observes that programmers often flock to online communities out of loneliness, making community software a digital attempt at creating third places. The post argues that design decisions in community software are as consequential as architectural decisions in physical spaces, shaping whether communities thrive or wither. This is a teaser for his longer article 'Building Communities with Software.'

2003/02/25

Joel announces that his discussion forum has been running as an experiment with various hidden design decisions to improve discussion quality. He teases an upcoming essay explaining the forum's design choices but says it will only be distributed to email subscribers, not published on the web, due to 'Heisenberg effects' — the idea that explaining the moderation mechanics publicly would undermine their effectiveness.

2003/02/14

Joel documents his quest to connect a professional studio microphone to a standard computer sound card for better audio quality in his CityDesk online demos. He details the exact equipment chain needed: a Shure SM58 microphone, a preamp to boost the signal to line level, and the right combination of cables and adapters. He notes that the music store salesperson confidently sold him the wrong setup, missing the preamp entirely. The post serves as a practical guide for others attempting the same thing, and includes before/after audio samples to demonstrate the improvement.

2003/02/05

Joel Spolsky responds to Dave Winer's question about why Joel on Software gets dramatically more traffic from Slashdot links than other sites. Spolsky first corrects the numbers, clarifying the difference between hits and page views, reducing the apparent gap significantly. He then explains the multiplier effect: Slashdot posts coincide with his email newsletter to 16,000 subscribers, plus dozens of bloggers linking simultaneously. Finally, he notes that deep back-catalog content keeps new visitors clicking around, inflating page view counts beyond what a single referral source would generate.

2003/02/04

Joel announces that he has moved Joel on Software to a new server at a colocation facility operated by Peer 1 Network. He mentions learning about web hosting in the process and links to a separate article describing the experience in detail. The post itself is purely an announcement with no substantive content.

2003/02/03

Joel announces a new column in the Programmer's Paradise catalog where he reviews software tools his company actually uses daily, starting with VMware. He also announces that FogBUGZ now supports MySQL (free) in addition to Microsoft SQL Server (expensive), as well as two additional source control systems. This latter move is framed as practicing what he preached in his earlier essay about commoditizing complements — by supporting free database alternatives, Fog Creek reduces the cost of FogBUGZ's complements to make their own product more attractive.

New Server at Peer 1 Network

Joel describes moving Joel on Software from a T1 line in the Fog Creek office to a colocation facility operated by Peer 1 Network. He explains why the T1 proved unreliable due to layers of outsourced providers (Savvis reselling Worldcom reselling Verizon), making outage resolution painfully slow. He walks through the colocation shopping process, comparing pricing tiers and bandwidth models, and explains why Peer 1 won out — they offered free hosting after seeing his site. The post concludes with a detailed account of physically setting up the Dell 2U server at the downtown Manhattan facility.

2003/01/28

Joel describes using a binary search technique on source control history to find a performance regression in CityDesk's publish times, which had doubled from one minute to two minutes. After a profiler identified general bottlenecks but not the specific regression, he systematically checked out old versions by date and timed them, narrowing down the offending change to a single day. The culprit was an inadvertent change to a cache key that turned 99% cache hits into 100% misses. He credits the technique to a colleague named Gabi at Juno and notes it took about an hour to find the bug.

2003/01/25

Spolsky recounts a disastrous week at Fog Creek Software where multiple systems failed in cascade: a CVS server crash led to days of backup restoration problems, a Verizon fire knocked out their T1 internet through a chain of outsourced providers, and frozen pipes caused by a faulty furnace installation. Each incident illustrates how backup plans and redundancy measures that seem adequate can fail when tested by real disasters. The central lesson is that weak systems appear healthy until neighboring systems break down, creating cascading failures. Spolsky argues for defense in depth: RAID mirroring plus backups, direct service providers instead of outsourced layers, and fixing all related vulnerabilities at once rather than just the immediate problem.

2003/01/16

This brief post contrasts Apple's secretive product development approach with Microsoft's tendency to talk about products years before they ship. Joel poses the question of whether companies should build buzz by discussing products under development or maintain secrecy until launch. The post serves as a teaser linking to his longer article 'Mouth Wide Shut' where he explores this question in depth.

2003/01/15

Joel Spolsky argues that optimizing a single business metric while ignoring others leads to local optimization that harms the overall business. He uses Dell Computer as a case study, showing how their obsessive focus on minimizing inventory has pushed costs onto suppliers and created delivery problems for customers. Joel shares his own frustrating experience ordering a server that was repeatedly delayed due to CPU unavailability. He contrasts Dell's build-to-order model unfavorably with competitors who can overnight ship servers, arguing that Dell's inventory obsession creates a significant competitive disadvantage when supply chain hiccups occur.

Mouth Wide Shut

Joel Spolsky argues that software companies should maintain radio silence about products under development rather than pre-announcing features. He contrasts Apple's surprise-driven launches with Microsoft's years-long public development cycles, advocating strongly for the Apple approach. He outlines five reasons for keeping quiet: avoiding broken promises, denying competitors advance notice, managing customer expectations, preserving flexibility, and keeping the policy simple enough for all employees to follow. He dismisses the value of advance buzz by pointing to the Segway's wasted early publicity and argues that early feedback can be gathered from a small group of selected customers rather than the entire world. Spolsky acknowledges that this policy may cost occasional sales but considers it worthwhile to protect reputation and avoid the vaporware trap.

2003/01/09

Joel briefly describes Fog Creek's search for new office space in New York's Garment District, noting the neighborhood's transition from clothing factories to creative and tech companies. He observes that the post-dot-com-bust real estate market heavily favors tenants. He then highlights Clay Shirky's essay about FedEx's failed ZapMail service, drawing a parallel to the hype around 802.11 wireless and VoIP technologies, suggesting the anticipated business opportunities may not materialize.

2003/01/03

Joel shares a brief update on CityDesk development work, covering two topics: the release of internal documentation about entity classes for refactoring database access in VB6, and switching the CityDesk installer from InnoSetup to My Inno Setup Extensions. He notes the practical benefits of the new setup tool and describes eliminating unnecessary steps from the installation wizard, particularly mocking the redundant 'ready to install' confirmation screen.

CityDesk Entity Classes

Joel shares Fog Creek's internal documentation for CityDesk's entity classes, a thin abstraction layer over DAO database access in VB 6.0. The entity classes map to database tables with a naming convention (prefix 'E') and provide standardized Load, Save, and List/GetNext methods for the four most common database operations. The design emphasizes simplicity and consistency while explicitly forbidding inefficient database patterns. The article serves as a practical example of how Fog Creek isolates database access behind simple object interfaces rather than scattering SQL throughout application code.

2003/01/02

This short post covers three topics: a teaser for Spolsky's upcoming column on Test-Driven Development in STQE Magazine, a useful Microsoft DLL database tool, and a book recommendation for Dr. Deming's management philosophy. The Deming discussion is the most substantive, arguing against numeric measurement-based incentive systems. Spolsky highlights two key problems: variability in measurements often reflects systemic issues only management can fix, and individuals will optimize locally for the measured metric at the expense of overall company performance.

2002/12/24

Joel Spolsky outlines Fog Creek Software's plans for 2003, including a printed column for Programmer's Paradise, a second book on management, server migration, new office space, and product updates for CityDesk and FogBUGZ. He emphasizes customer-driven development for CityDesk, focusing on removing specific blockers that prevent adoption. For FogBUGZ, the strategy involves commoditizing complements by supporting open-source databases and expanding into broader development workflow management.

2002/12/11

Joel draws a parallel between Lord Palmerston's famous quote about the impossibly complex Schleswig-Holstein question and the state of modern programming. By invoking a 19th-century diplomatic crisis that drove experts mad, he argues that software development has become unnecessarily complicated. The post is essentially a teaser linking to his longer 'Lord Palmerston and Programming' essay.

2002/11/25

This is an extremely brief announcement post noting that new Spanish translations of Joel's articles have been added to the site. There is no substantive argument or analysis — it is purely a housekeeping update for readers. The entire post is six words plus a hyperlink.

2002/11/19

Spolsky recommends Eliyahu Goldratt's books 'The Goal' and 'Critical Chain,' explaining how the Theory of Constraints applies to software project scheduling. He describes how padded estimates paradoxically cause schedules to slip due to Student Syndrome, multitasking overhead, and the asymmetry where delays accumulate but advances do not. Goldratt's solution is to use unpadded 50th-percentile estimates for individual tasks and move all buffer time to the end of the project. Spolsky finds this approach compelling for anyone doing project management.

2002/11/14

Spolsky addresses the growing spam problem and the collateral damage caused by overzealous spam filtering. He describes how aggressive filters are bouncing legitimate emails, including his own double-opt-in mailing list, because the delivery provider's IP was blacklisted. He advocates for tagging-based spam filters over bounce-based ones, since bouncing risks losing wanted mail. He then proposes a micropayment system where sending an email costs one cent, which would be economically prohibitive for spammers but trivial for legitimate senders.

2002/11/13

This is a brief announcement post noting that Joel on Software has launched a Russian translation, with seven articles initially available. Joel thanks the eleven translators and editors who contributed to the effort and notes that more translated articles are forthcoming.

2002/11/11

This is a brief teaser post directing readers to Joel's full article 'The Law of Leaky Abstractions.' The post introduces the concept that all abstractions leak — they fail to perfectly hide their underlying complexity. Joel argues this leakage happens pervasively and is a drag on software development. The full argument is developed in the linked feature article, which became one of his most influential pieces.

The Law of Leaky Abstractions

Spolsky introduces his 'Law of Leaky Abstractions,' arguing that all non-trivial abstractions inevitably fail to fully hide the complexity beneath them. He illustrates this with TCP/IP as a primary example — TCP builds reliability on top of unreliable IP, but network failures still leak through. He extends this to SQL query performance, C++ strings, NFS file systems, ASP.NET, and even driving in rain. The key consequence is that while abstractions let us handle greater complexity, they don't reduce the amount developers must learn, because when abstractions break, you need to understand the underlying layers. Paradoxically, as programming tools become more powerful and abstract, becoming a proficient programmer becomes harder, not easier.

2002/11/08

After shipping FogBUGZ 3.0, Spolsky faced unexpected server issues when trial users surged beyond capacity. Rather than lamenting the lack of load testing, he constructs a simple expected-cost analysis showing it was actually rational to skip it. He extends this into a broader argument about using economic models to allocate engineering resources, distinguishing between internal software (where bugginess is acceptable) and commercial software (where incremental quality improvements drive competitive advantage).

2002/11/04

Joel announces the release of FogBUGZ 3.0, which expands from simple bug tracking to a broader development management system. The upgrade emphasizes customer feedback integration, allowing companies to handle customer service email through a shared web interface rather than single-user email clients. It supports Extreme Programming-style prioritized feature lists. Joel highlights that FogBUGZ intentionally omits individual performance metrics, arguing that measuring programmers by bug counts causes them to game the system rather than improve quality.

2002/10/30

This is an extremely brief post, essentially a one-liner sharing a humorous screenshot from FogBugz's sample bug database. Joel links to an image of a sample bug report that contains an amusing complaint about 'Programmer Longhair's attitude.' The post serves as light entertainment and indirect promotion of FogBugz, Fog Creek's bug tracking product.

2002/10/28

Joel provides a brief status update on the upcoming FogBUGZ 3.0 release, scheduled for November 4th. The remaining work includes marketing website updates, minor bug fixes, and online store improvements for selling support contracts and upgrades. It's a short countdown post reflecting the final stretch before shipping.

2002/10/23

Joel Spolsky revisits a list of prominent Silicon Alley (New York City dot-com) companies he had tracked two years earlier, checking how their stocks performed during the continued tech bust. Nearly every company on the list declined further, with many effectively worthless or acquired at fire-sale prices. He traces the fates of each company — mergers, name changes, lawsuits, and shutdowns — painting a picture of an industry that collapsed under its own hype. He notes with humor that his former employer Juno Online Services was the sole bright spot, having risen in value after replacing its old management.

2002/10/21

Joel provides brief updates on several technical topics he's been discussing. He addresses VNC alternatives, noting TightVNC is faster but still inferior to Terminal Services. He shares data on .NET CLR browser penetration rates (6-8%, lower on consumer sites). He also discusses RSS bandwidth waste, concluding that HTTP spec already has the solution and aggregators need to implement it, praising Dave Winer for quick implementation and calling on others to follow.

2002/10/19

Joel Spolsky shares a collection of observations on technology topics circa 2002, covering remote desktop software, CPU architecture strategy, Mozilla's XUL framework, and server log analysis. He argues Windows Terminal Services is far superior to VNC for remote access due to its smarter wire protocol. He draws a parallel between Intel's ground-up Itanium redesign and Netscape's rewrite, predicting AMD's incremental Hammer approach will win. He revisits his critique of Netscape's rewrite-from-scratch decision, arguing they should have shipped incrementally while acknowledging XUL as a genuinely valuable outcome. He closes with early-internet-era data questions about .NET adoption and RSS feed usage.

2002/10/18

This is a brief promotional post announcing the upcoming release of FogBUGZ 3.0, scheduled for November 4th. Spolsky shares a link to a preview of new features and references an external review by Daniel Berlinger. The post confirms the product mascot (an orangutan) is staying. It's essentially a product marketing update rather than an essay.

2002/10/17

This is a short link-blog post where Joel Spolsky shares three unrelated links he found interesting. He highlights a positive review of his book on usability, a humorous personification of programming languages from Burningbird, and a National Review article criticizing intelligence service leadership. The post is characteristic of early-2000s blogging style where authors curated interesting links with brief commentary.

2002/10/16

Joel provides a brief status update on the community-driven effort to translate Joel on Software articles into multiple languages. He notes that new translations are available in over ten languages and acknowledges that he sometimes delays responding to volunteer translators for up to a week. He puts out a call for copy editors in several languages where translations are stuck in the queue.

2002/10/09

Joel recommends the new edition of Danny Goodman's Dynamic HTML reference book. He praises the first edition as the best HTML reference despite being outdated, and notes the new 1400-page edition covers what browsers actually do in practice. He considers it essential for anyone working with HTML.

2002/10/08

Spolsky responds to reader feedback about his FogBUGZ Setup program, defending several design decisions. He explains why setup operations should be reversible rather than batched at the end, since failures mid-batch still require rollback. He defends using VC++/MFC over Delphi by arguing productivity depends on what the developer already knows, not abstract language superiority. Most notably, he argues that investing in a good setup program pays off through reduced tech support costs, customer delight that drives upgrades, and better software reviews.

2002/10/07

This is an extremely brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky introduces a new discussion group dedicated to Delphi programming questions, hosted on the Fog Creek discussion forums. The post contains virtually no substantive content beyond the link and one-line description. It serves purely as a signal boost for the new forum.

2002/10/02

Joel describes spending four weeks writing the FogBUGZ 3.0 setup program from scratch in VC++ and MFC because no commercial installer toolkit could handle even a quarter of what was needed. He imposed a requirement that every step of the installation wizard be completely reversible, allowing users to back up through the wizard while the installer silently undoes all changes. He acknowledges this may have been overkill but considers the result a great setup program.

Worst Project Ever?

Eddie Kessler, Napster's former VP of Engineering and CTO, responds to Joel Spolsky's criticism of Napster's development timeline. He details the enormous technical challenges involved in building a paid music service on peer-to-peer technology, including DRM, acoustic fingerprinting, royalty payment systems, and content identification. Kessler argues the system was actually completed and ready, but deployment was blocked by record labels refusing to license content. He also notes the team was simultaneously forced to modify the existing system under court order while key engineers and he himself were consumed by legal proceedings.

2002/09/19

This is a brief link-blog entry where Spolsky references Dave Winer's commentary on his earlier 'Platforms' essay, noting the lesson of General Magic as a cautionary tale about platforms positioned as applications. He also announces a new .NET programming discussion group on Fog Creek's forums, linking to his rationale for creating it and humorously hoping it won't devolve into unhelpful tech support chaos.

2002/09/18

Spolsky comments on NASA's cancellation of a $273 million launch-control computer replacement project that was over budget and behind schedule. He questions why government agencies like NASA and the FAA continue running 1970s-era systems when the software complexity of those old mainframes was minimal by modern standards. He provocatively suggests that recreating such systems with modern tools would be trivially easy, or failing that, a simple CPU emulator could be written in weeks. The post uses the NASA failure to take a swipe at the mythology surrounding heavyweight software processes like SEI Level 5.

2002/09/13

Spolsky reflects on the declining effectiveness of advertising, noting that consumers have built up immunity to ads because advertisers repeatedly lied. He argues this forces companies into editorial and PR placement, where consumer defenses are lower. However, he identifies a tragedy of the commons: just as advertising destroyed its own credibility through overuse and dishonesty, editorial content will suffer the same fate once marketers pollute it with promotional messaging disguised as genuine content.

2002/09/12

Spolsky debates whether FogBUGZ 3.0 should support custom fields, a feature he has historically opposed. He argues that custom fields lead to bloated bug entry forms that discourage people from reporting bugs at all, which is far worse than missing some metadata. When he surveyed customers requesting custom fields, he found most wanted fields that already existed in the product or fields that shouldn't be tracked as structured data. Despite his conviction that omitting custom fields is the right design choice, he acknowledges the sales cost of appearing to lack a feature competitors offer.

2002/09/10

Spolsky examines the business case for developing Mac software in 2002, noting that while Mac shops are moving to OS X-only development, the fundamental economics are challenging. With Mac market share at roughly 3.5%, developers need their product to appeal to 25 times more Mac users proportionally than Windows users just to break even. He acknowledges emotional reasons for Mac development but argues that as a business investment, the math is brutally unfavorable unless developers can demonstrate how they'll overcome that multiplier through less competition or niche dominance.

2002/09/04

This is a very brief blog post where Joel Spolsky responds to reader questions about his reference to Rick Chapman's upcoming book on stupidity in the software industry. He explains he read the manuscript to write the foreword and promises to announce its release. He also gives a quick shout-out to TopCoder.com as a cool concept for online programming competitions.

2002/09/03

Spolsky comments on Napster's failure to deliver a legal, paid music service despite having two years and a full development team, when the original Napster was built by one person in three months. He identifies this as a recurring pattern in software development where a single developer builds version 1 quickly, but a larger team fails to deliver version 2 for years.

2002/08/30

Joel Spolsky argues that platform success depends entirely on developer adoption. Companies kill their platforms by either failing to recognize they have a platform (treating it as an application) or by being greedy and trying to capture all revenue themselves. The post serves as a brief pointer to a longer essay on platforms.

Platforms

Spolsky argues that platform companies must recognize they are platform companies and prioritize developer adoption above all else. He examines historical examples of platform failures (NetWare, Apple, OS/2, IBM PS/2) where vendors either didn't realize they had a platform or got greedy and locked out developers. He contrasts these with successes like Windows and Java, which offered free or cheap runtimes and development tools. The bulk of the post uses Groove as a case study — a technology with compelling P2P architecture that is doomed because it charges for its runtime and treats itself as an application rather than a platform. Spolsky concludes that platforms need free runtimes to achieve the massive developer adoption required for success.

2002/08/25

Spolsky comments on Mozilla's post-mortem reflections about open-source UI design challenges. He references Peter Trudelle's admission that Netscape had no model for large-scale UI design in open source, and Matthew Thomas's frustrations with the process. Spolsky argues that design work—whether architectural or UI—suffers enormously when teams are geographically dispersed. He concludes that co-located teams produce vastly better results and declares he would never agree to work with a dispersed team.

2002/08/19

This brief link roundup post touches on several topics: Microsoft's .NET marketing failures, small font sizes in web design, and CityDesk product news. Spolsky references CNet's criticism of Microsoft's .NET marketing campaign, noting he had written about the same issue two years earlier. He concedes that while .NET was primarily a marketing exercise rather than a technological revolution, the development tools did make impressive progress. The post also highlights Jakob Nielsen's complaint about tiny text on websites and promotes a new Flash demo for Fog Creek's CityDesk product.

2002/08/15

This is a very brief administrative post where Joel announces two things: he has been working on an improved online trial for FogBUGZ, and he is moving CityDesk-related news to a separate dedicated site to avoid boring readers who don't use CityDesk.

2002/08/13

Joel Spolsky advocates for daily builds as an essential software development practice. He argues they prevent individual developers from breaking the team's workflow, enable tracking down regression bugs through binary search of historical builds, and provide a canonical release process. He recommends FinalBuilder as a tool for implementing daily builds on Windows, noting his team has expanded its use beyond builds to routine system administration tasks. The post includes a promotional discount for the tool exclusively for his readers.

2002/08/05

This is a brief link-blog post with two unrelated items. Spolsky shares a Bruce Sterling quote criticizing open source software's user experience as ugly and hostile to users. He also announces that Fog Creek has sent out its first affiliate payment checks and notes that CityDesk was mentioned in the New York Times.

2002/07/30

This short post covers two practical problems Joel encountered: providing remote tech support through firewalls and the declining effectiveness of SpamAssassin. For remote support, he needed a way to control customers' computers to fix FogBUGZ installations, but existing tools required complex setup and didn't work behind firewalls. He settled on TightVNC in 'listen' mode as a solution. On spam, he observed that SpamAssassin's effectiveness dropped from 99% to 75% because spammers were actively studying its publicly documented scoring rules to evade detection.

2002/07/19

Joel announces he will be on vacation from July 19-29 and shares his policy of not checking email or the web while away. He also provides a brief update on the translation project for his articles, noting that if all volunteers follow through, there will be at least 210 translated articles across 38 languages.

2002/07/18

Joel reviews Listen.com (Rhapsody), an early legal music streaming service offering unlimited access to music from five major labels for $100/year. He praises its UI superiority over piracy alternatives like Napster and KaZaa, highlighting features like cross-indexing, artist discovery, and reliable playback. He frames it as the recording industry finally providing a reasonable legal alternative to piracy. He also briefly mentions Dave's Google toolbar as a useful command-line interface for the web.

2002/07/16

Joel shares and endorses Steven Den Beste's observation about the recurring pattern of Mac fanatics' unrealistic expectations before each MacWorld event. The brief post highlights the cognitive dissonance required to perpetually believe the next Apple announcement will be the one that finally converts the masses. It's a quick link-blog entry rather than a full essay.

2002/07/15

Spolsky argues that measuring knowledge worker performance inevitably leads to 'measurement dysfunction,' where workers optimize for the metric rather than actual value. He illustrates this with examples from Amazon and Gateway, where customer service reps gamed call-per-hour metrics by hanging up on customers. He extends the argument to software development, where rewarding code output and bug fixes incentivizes writing buggy code, and to CEO compensation, where stock options incentivize short-term stock inflation over long-term company health. Drawing on Robert Austin's research, he concludes that without 100% supervision, incentive pay tied to measurements is fundamentally broken.

2002/06/25

This is a brief announcement post noting that Chinese (Simplified) and Hungarian translations of Joel on Software are now available. The post contains no substantive argument or analysis, serving purely as a site update notification.

2002/06/19

This is a very brief announcement post where Joel Spolsky notes that his blog 'Joel on Software' has been translated into Dutch and Indonesian. There is no substantive argument or analysis — it is purely informational. The post consists of a single sentence with links to the translated versions.

2002/06/16

Joel Spolsky introduces his Strategy Letter V by observing that companies investing heavily in open source software are motivated by business strategy, not idealism. He frames open source through the lens of microeconomic complements, suggesting that companies support open source when it commoditizes products that complement their own revenue-generating offerings. This is a teaser post pointing readers to the full essay.

2002/06/15

Joel announces that his translation project for Joel on Software has attracted 110 volunteers translating into 29 languages. The first translated articles in Swedish and Italian are now live. He used CityDesk's multilingual support features to build the translated site, noting it took about 2 hours to set up initially but adding new languages and articles is now quick. He hasn't yet tackled right-to-left languages or complex character sets.

Strategy Letter V

Spolsky applies the microeconomic concept of complements to explain corporate technology strategy, particularly around open source software. He argues that smart companies deliberately try to commoditize their products' complements to increase demand and pricing power for their own products. He demonstrates this through examples including IBM commoditizing PC add-ins, Microsoft commoditizing PC hardware, and major corporations funding open source development. He debunks the notion that companies support open source out of idealism, showing it's a rational economic strategy. He also argues that open source software is not exempt from economic laws, and that 'free' code still has real costs in developer time and opportunity cost. The essay concludes by noting that software can easily commoditize hardware, but the reverse is extremely difficult due to switching costs.

2002/06/07

This is an extremely brief post where Joel Spolsky expresses excitement about his blog content being translated into 15 different languages. The post consists of just a single exclamatory sentence with a link to a language signup page. It reflects the growing international readership of Joel on Software during its early years. The post serves as a milestone marker rather than a substantive essay.

2002/06/06

Joel Spolsky puts out a call for volunteers to translate his blog 'Joel on Software' into as many languages as possible. He emphasizes flexibility, allowing contributors to translate as much or as little as they want in any language. He also seeks volunteer copy editors to review incoming translations.

2002/05/16

This is an extremely brief post, essentially a link to a discussion forum question by James Ladd about software license management solutions. Joel adds a parenthetical note that Fog Creek is building their own licensing solution rather than using a third-party product. There is no substantive argument or analysis in this post.

2002/05/13

Joel Spolsky celebrates the demise of RealNames, a company that attempted to create an alternative namespace system for the internet. He characterizes it as a scam designed to monopolize trademarks similar to Verisign, with a fundamentally flawed 'boil the ocean' business model requiring universal adoption. He mocks the founder's public complaints about the shutdown and extends his criticism to similar company New.net, questioning why anyone would pay for domain names only visible to some internet users.

2002/05/10

In this very brief post, Joel Spolsky highlights Jim Highsmith's 'design the box' technique for product vision. The idea is that teams should imagine designing the retail box for their product as a way to clarify what the product is really about. Joel endorses this as a great approach to figuring out the big picture of the products you build.

Product Vision

This post, written by Jim Highsmith and introduced by Joel Spolsky, advocates for creating a clear product vision statement before diving into development. It presents Geoffrey Moore's product vision template from Crossing the Chasm and introduces the 'Design the Box' exercise, where cross-functional teams imagine their product sold in a shrink-wrapped box and must identify the 3-4 key selling points. Spolsky frames the piece by noting that good design requires difficult tradeoffs guided by a vision statement, citing his own CityDesk product as an example. The core argument is that without a shared vision, iterative development degenerates into aimless oscillation.

2002/05/08

Spolsky highlights Bertrand Meyer's analysis of the multiple language support in Microsoft's .NET platform, endorsing it as superior to his own earlier take. Meyer argues that while .NET claims to support many languages, several of them (C#, VB.NET, Managed C++) are essentially the same language with different syntax, since they all converge on the same underlying object model. Spolsky agrees and predicts that any future Java.NET would follow the same pattern of superficial differentiation.

2002/05/07

Spolsky introduces his 'Five Worlds' framework, arguing that not all software development is the same and should not be treated as such. He highlights the continuum between internal software, consultingware, and shrinkwrap products. The post traces how software often evolves from internal tools into expensive consulting-driven products when companies try to sell them externally. He argues that companies become addicted to consulting revenue and fail to make the transition to true shrinkwrap software.

2002/05/06

Spolsky addresses the futility of religious wars in technology debates, using reactions to his .NET commentary as a case study. He shows how readers reduce nuanced positions to binary for/against stances, missing that complex technologies have both positives and negatives. He then extends this to design philosophy, arguing that good design requires resolving genuinely conflicting goals rather than pretending they don't exist. The post concludes with a brief recommendation against Verisign for domain registration and certificates.

Five Worlds

Spolsky argues that software development advice is often given without specifying which type of software it applies to, leading to misunderstandings and misapplied methodologies. He identifies five distinct worlds of software development: shrinkwrap, internal, embedded, games, and throwaway code, each with different constraints around usability, quality, economics, and deployment. He illustrates the problem by examining Kent Beck's claim that Extreme Programming eliminates the need for bug tracking, showing that while this might hold for internal corporate software, it fails for shrinkwrap products that must handle diverse real-world environments like Polish keyboard layouts. The post concludes that methodology advice should always be evaluated in the context of what kind of software you're actually building.

2002/05/05

Spolsky examines why developers choose programming languages, arguing that the decision is almost never about syntax but about practical constraints like runtime size, platform compatibility, and deployment requirements. He observes that each language occupies a specific niche defined by its ecosystem and tradeoffs rather than its curly braces or semicolons. This leads him to question Microsoft's .NET cross-language strategy, which offers a choice of syntax while locking developers into a single runtime and platform. He concludes that .NET provides language choice exactly where it doesn't matter.

2002/04/30

Joel Spolsky recounts a lunch conversation with Tom DeMarco about reconciling pair programming with private offices for developers. DeMarco explains that people doing similar work don't distract each other, but mixing different work styles (like programmers and sales reps) causes problems. They conclude the ideal setup gives programmers private offices for solo work while providing dedicated labs for pair programming, free from interruptions. Spolsky also briefly criticizes a Salon article for misapplying Brooks's Mythical Man Month to Microsoft's security code review effort.

2002/04/28

Spolsky reconsiders his objection to Extreme Programming's frequent iteration model for shrinkwrapped software. After talking with Kent Beck, he realizes that frequent iterations don't require frequent releases — teams can iterate internally while releasing on a longer schedule. He proposes a model where volunteer customers receive frequent builds for feedback while the broader market gets less frequent releases, allowing design mistakes to be corrected before they're locked in by backwards compatibility constraints.

2002/04/27

Spolsky discusses the paradox of feature complexity in software design, citing a New York Times article about how 'featuritis' sells products even though it reduces usability. He argues that great design eliminates visible choices rather than adding them, using examples from Windows NT's offline folders, Excel's one-click sorting, and his own work simplifying FogBUGZ's bug-moving feature. The core tension is that making interfaces simpler for users actually requires more complex code underneath.

2002/04/25

Spolsky responds to criticism of SOAP by arguing that its wire-format complexity is irrelevant since developers interact through higher-level tools like Intellisense, not raw XML. He compares SOAP critics to those who would reject Pentium processors for having complex instruction sets. However, he then pivots to argue that SOAP's real problems are far more fundamental: it lacks essential remoting features like events and references, putting it a decade behind CORBA and DCOM. He concludes that the biggest issue is that SOAP and Web Services are massively overhyped by trade publications and VCs, and startups chasing the bandwagon will get crushed by the inevitable backlash.

2002/04/19

Joel shares his experience building an internal business dashboard with ASP.NET, noting how productive the framework is for rapid feature development. He implemented two new features in just 20 minutes. However, he identifies several significant drawbacks: IDE performance issues, the lack of deterministic destructors requiring manual resource management, and the large 20MB runtime requirement. He concludes with a suspicion that Microsoft deliberately optimizes .NET for internal corporate applications rather than shrinkwrap software, since the latter is where Microsoft competes.

2002/04/12

This short blog post covers three unrelated topics: the rise of whitelist spam filters and their impact on mailing lists, a link to an essay about why free software has poor usability, and the announcement of a coupon system for Fog Creek's web shop. Joel notes that whitelist filters are generating auto-replies to his newsletter, creating a practical problem for mailing list operators. He uses the coupon announcement to briefly explain A/B testing pricing strategies.

2002/04/11

Joel comments on Microsoft's abandonment of Hailstorm, their ambitious plan to centralize personal data as an extension of Passport. He identifies three reasons for its failure: other companies refused to participate due to distrust and lack of benefit, consumers rejected trusting Microsoft with personal data, and the project's champion Rick Belluzzo was an outside executive in a company hostile to outside hires. Joel also briefly notes he's published Fog Creek's .NET migration strategy.

Our .NET Strategy

Joel Spolsky outlines Fog Creek's strategy for gradually migrating to Microsoft's .NET framework, explaining why they find it compelling despite his own 'never rewrite from scratch' rule. He praises .NET's productivity gains, consistent class libraries, and C# as a language, crediting Anders Hejlsberg as the key architect. However, he identifies two practical barriers: the team's inexperience with .NET best practices and the large 20MB runtime that users would need to download. The strategy is to learn .NET by using it for internal tools first, then gradually port customer-facing products once the .NET runtime achieves broad adoption.

2002/04/10

Joel announces Fog Creek Software's affiliate marketing program, framing it as a programmer's approach to marketing — writing code instead of making phone calls. The program offers 15-20% commissions for referrals that lead to software purchases, tracked via cookies. He positions this as guerrilla marketing appropriate for a small, bootstrapped software company. The post also briefly introduces a companion article about picking ship dates and using schedules to justify cutting features.

Picking a Ship Date

Joel Spolsky argues that picking a ship date should be done early (even arbitrarily), then used as a forcing function to cut low-priority features rather than slipping the schedule. He outlines three release cadences — frequent small releases for small teams, 12-18 month cycles for commercial software, and 3-5 year cycles for platforms — and explains the tradeoffs driving each. A key insight is that commercial products should avoid shipping too early because first impressions are nearly permanent, using Marimba Castanet as a cautionary tale. He also warns against doing features in order of fun rather than priority, and notes that even web-delivered software shouldn't change too frequently because it undermines usability and user expectations.

2002/04/07

Spolsky observes a recurring pattern in reviews of lean Microsoft Office competitors: reviewers praise the bloat-free approach but then complain about missing features they personally need, like word count. He argues that the '80/20 myth' — the idea that users only need 20% of Office's features — falls apart because every user needs a different 20%. The market consistently chooses feature-rich software over stripped-down alternatives.

2002/04/02

Spolsky argues that incomprehensible technology specs are a reliable signal that the technology won't matter. He uses historical examples to show that simplification drives adoption: HTML succeeded where SGML failed, HTTP replaced FTP by being simpler, and within COM, the simple interfaces thrived while the complex ones languished. The core message is that complexity is the enemy of adoption.

2002/03/20

In this brief post, Spolsky shares his frustration with learning ADO.NET, questioning whether it represents technological progress. He then addresses a more significant concern: developers treating his writings as scripture rather than thinking critically for themselves. He describes receiving emails from teams who quote his articles at each other during disagreements, expecting him to settle their disputes. He concludes that no methodology or external authority can substitute for independent thinking.

2002/03/18

This brief post shares a positive review of CityDesk from the Sydney Morning Herald, which praises it as the best answer for small-to-medium sites transitioning to content management systems. Joel also references a repeated interview with Rick Chapman, reaffirming his longstanding position against rewriting large software products from scratch. The post reinforces two recurring Spolsky themes: promoting his own product and opposing ground-up rewrites.

2002/03/14

Joel announces the release of CityDesk Service Pack 1, a free update shipped three months after the original version. The update fixes approximately 100 bugs and adds frequently requested features. The biggest user complaint was about weird URL generation, which surprised Joel since other CMS tools had the same issue. He highlights their crash reporting system as instrumental in discovering bugs.

2002/03/13

Joel Spolsky announces a revamped recommended reading list for software developers. He has curated the list down to 19 must-read books plus 2 additional books for aspiring programmers. The goal is to create a definitive 'programmers bookshelf' of essential reading. He removed good-but-not-crucial titles and added new ones to sharpen the list's focus.

2002/03/11

Joel briefly mentions two new programming books his publisher sent him: 'Herding Cats' by J. Hank Rainwater about leading programmers, and 'The Career Programmer' by Christopher Duncan about navigating workplace realities. He hasn't read either yet and asks his readers whether they deserve a spot in his recommended reading list.

2002/03/05

This ultra-brief post serves as a logical connector between two of Spolsky's recurring arguments. He asserts that since nothing in software is as simple as it seems, and since reducing risk is paramount, the only rational conclusion is that you must design before you implement. The post links to his longer essay 'Nothing Is As Simple As It Seems' for the full argument.

Nothing is as Simple as it Seems

Spolsky argues that upfront design is essential in software development because nothing is ever as simple as it seems. He illustrates this with a CityDesk usability fix where three minutes of design work on paper saved hours of coding by simplifying a wizard into two menu items. He pushes back against the perception that Extreme Programming advocates zero design, arguing that most programmers use 'no design' as an excuse for laziness that ultimately costs more time. He acknowledges that massive systems must evolve organically, but insists that feature-level design before implementation is non-negotiable for reducing schedule risk and building better software.

2002/02/25

This is an ultra-brief link post where Joel Spolsky shares that Ev (Evan Williams, creator of Blogger) reviewed Joel's 'User Interface for Programmers' series. The entire post is a single sentence with a thank-you. It serves as a social acknowledgment and cross-blog reference typical of early 2000s blogging culture.

2002/02/09

This brief teaser post introduces Joel's 'Iceberg Secret' essay through a satirical vignette of a clueless CEO. The CEO mistakes the natural slowdown after an initial prototype phase for laziness, while himself lounging on a golf course. He contemplates firing developers to motivate the team, completely misunderstanding why software projects appear to slow down after early rapid progress. The post sets up Joel's longer essay about the disconnect between visible progress and actual progress in software development.

The Iceberg Secret, Revealed

Spolsky reveals what he calls 'The Iceberg Secret': non-technical people judge software progress almost entirely by its visual appearance, not its underlying functionality. Since roughly 90% of software work happens 'under the covers,' showing a polished UI makes stakeholders think a project is nearly done, while showing an ugly but functional prototype makes them think it's barely started. He argues that customers fundamentally don't know what they want, and developers should take ownership of design rather than expecting customers to specify requirements. The post offers practical strategies for managing perceptions, including controlling demo aesthetics, providing detailed schedules, and giving stakeholders harmless visual choices to deliberate over.

2002/02/08

Spolsky marks the closure of ArsDigita as the official end of the Internet Exuberance era. He examines why ArsDigita failed, noting that while it's tempting to blame VCs who replaced the visionary founder with uninspiring management, the real cause was the collapse of the internet consulting market. He contrasts Fog Creek's survival, attributing it to late entry and retaining proprietary software rather than open-sourcing their core product. He also cynically observes that failed companies prefer acquisition over liquidation purely to polish executives' resumes.

2002/02/06