Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity

You know Spolsky's type, most likely: the extremely well-informed blowhard. He knows a lot, particularly in his specialty, and he's good at seeing connections, so you pay attention to what he says, but you're pretty sure that he's going to say everything with perfect confidence, so everything he says, you take with a grain of salt.
But what he says is always useful, in that it gives you a pretty clear and well-laid out reason for believing whatever it is he thinks to be the case. Then it's up to you to go out and figure out what else there is to be said. As long as you don't get taken up in his "of course I'm right, I'm from New York" mode of writing, you'll come away with some stuff to think about in software development.

I remember reading lots of these pieces when they ran on Spolksy's blog ten years ago, but they hold up pretty well gathered together in a book. Some industry observations (like why Apple can't sell hardware, how Netscape starting from scratch) have proven to be wrong, but the track record is overall pretty good, and the material about managing programmers is still pretty sharp.

Surprisingly good. I wish I'd read this before I started at Apple.

While Joel has little to say on the specifics of how to write code, he has a lot to say, all of it very sensible, on the business-side of programming. What a company should do, whom it should hire, how it should be managed, are all covered.
In particular I found very interesting the explanations of various management practices in software companies. These irritated me while I was at Apple but when explained well, seem quite reasonable, sensible and justifiable.

A very easy quick read, and well worth it.

Very engaging, often informative or insightful. I especially liked the essay on character encoding. Spolsky also gives good tips on office environment, productivity, and must-haves in a development environment -- encouraging you to take on those projects that seem peripheral to the work but make a world of difference.

Most tech books get old and out-of-date with time. However I learned plenty of stuff from Joel on Software and enjoyed the author's humour and approach on many topics.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of things I learned (more) about:
- Always have a bug tracking system.
- Fix bugs first before you move on to working on new features. Saves lots of time.
- The Joel Test. I need to score better at that.
- Character encodings. I always got away with not knowing much about that, now I do. Thanks Joel :D.
- Do paper prototyping.
- Incentive pay. Don't do that.
- Avoid multi-tasking. Humans aren't really good at it.
- Not-Invented-Here Syndrome. It's not necessarily bad.
- Chicken-And-Egg problems in the software world.

There's a sequel: More Joel on show more Software, I might read it sometime.

Quotes:

I always wanted to start a blog, this is somewhat of a motivation.

[...] Philip Greenspun, who taught me that if you know something, you need to publish it on the web for others to learn from.

Rewarding good coders by promoting them to a different position, one that involves writing English, not C , is a classic case of the Peter Principle: people tend to be promoted to their level of incompetence.

About the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome:

If it's a core business function, do it yourself, no matter what.

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Outdated, but fun read for programmers and managers alike.

Brilliant read, Joel’s thoughts have somehow withstood the test of time in one of the fastest-changing fields.