Mea Culpa Joel
Mea culpa Joel Spolsky for thinking that you are a windbag (or gust pocket). I’ve just finished reading “Joel on Software” by Apress ( my favorite publisher). The book is funny, and chockful of incredible insight and commentary. I even forgive you mentioning the fact that you worked at MS as many times as you did, since it wasn’t done completely gratuitously, well… except maybe the part about The GAP on Sundays. Anyways, I can highly recommend the book to any programmer who wants to read some entertaining but knowledgable commentary on our working world. Joel, I’ve said it before … you have a great gift of gab.
One part that especially hit home for me was the discussion of Israeli Paratroopers and your Generals strategy of Fire and Motion. I have a personal affliction of wanting to build something the “right” way. Guess its my German heritage. It took me years to learn that programming is a concrete expression of a persons way of thinking and mind set. Therefore the same problem solved by 5 different coders will have most likely 5 different solutions. So which is the “right” way? Boy oh boy, it took a long time for that to click. Your discussion of “Fire and Motion” put words to my own personal experience. I could sit for hours reading and researching in order to find the just the right nugget of information or I can sit and write code. Stumbling at first but progressively more refined and refactored. Fire and Motion. Cool.
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