Joel on Software: And on Diverse & Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest etc..: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters ... or Ill-Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity [Paperback]

Joel Spolsky began his legendary web log, www.joelonsoftware.com, in March 2000, in order to offer insights for improving the world of programming. Spolsky based these observations on years of personal experience.

The result just a handful of years later? Spolsky's technical knowledge, caustic wit, and extraordinary writing skills have earned him status as a programming guru! His blog has become renowned throughout the programming worldnow linked to more than 600 websites and translated into over 30 languages.

Joel on Software covers every conceivable aspect of software programming—from the best way to write code, to the best way to design an office in which to write code! All programmers, all people who want to enhance their knowledge of programmers, and all who are trying to manage programmers will surely relate to Joel's musings.

Table of Contents

1. Choosing a Language
2. Back to Basics
3. The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code
4. The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)
5. Painless Functional Specifications Part 1: Why Bother?
6. Painless Functional Specifications Part 2: What’s a Spec?
7. Painless Functional Specifications Part 3: But . . . How?
8. Painless Functional Specifications Part 4: Tips
9. Painless Software Schedules
10. Daily Builds Are Your Friend
11. Hard-Assed Bug Fixin’
12. Five Worlds
13. Paper Prototyping
14. Don’t Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You
15. Fire and Motion
16. Craftsmanship
17. Three Wrong Ideas from Computer Science
18. Biculturalism
19. Get Crash Reports From Users—Automatically!
20. The Guerilla Guide to Interviewing
21. Incentive Pay Considered Harmful
22. Top Five (Wrong) Reasons You Don’t Have Testers
23. Human Task Switches Considered Harmful
24. Things You Should Never Do, Part One
25. The Iceberg Secret, Revealed
26. The Law of Leaky Abstractions
27. Lord Palmerston on Programming
28. Measurement
29. Rick Chapman Is In Search of Stupidity
30. What Is the Work of Dogs in This Country?
31. Getting Things Done When You’re Only a Grunt
32. Two Stories
33. Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef
34. Nothing Is As Simple As It Seems
35. In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome
36. Strategy Letter I: Ben & Jerry’s vs. Amazon
37. Strategy Letter II: Chicken-and-Egg Problems
38. Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back!
39. Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth
40. Strategy Letter V: The Economics of Open Source
41. A Week of Murphy’s Law Gone Wild
42. How Microsoft Lost the API War
43. Microsoft Goes Bonkers
44. Our .NET Strategy
45. Please Sir May I Have a Linker?