I have just finished reading The
Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky. If you
don’t know Spolsky, his writings can be found at Joel
on Software, which is considered by many to be one of the great sources
of wisdom in the software development industry.
Although Joel is a great writer, he certainly hasn’t cornered the market on good thinking
and writing about software. There are many people out there contributing to
magazines, books, and the community in general with wonderful pearls of knowledge
that help us hone our craft. Luckily for the rest of us, Joel is a fan of other
people’s work as well. He has assembled some of the best essays from 2005
into entertaining and enjoyable collection.
I don’t see how you can consider yourself a software development professional without
having read this book. The essays vary in topic, breadth, and detail, but I
found each one entertaining and thought provoking. Joel obviously chose writings
that would appeal to a broad variety of disciplines and technical abilities.
Primarily a Microsoft developer myself, I was not distracted by technology or foreign
code once.
I hope Joel can keep these volumes flowing as the years pass. If so, I
will be collecting them from here forward. I won’t be charging this one to my
company; I want to keep it myself.