Complete Archive

It just goes on and on and on...

Since March, 2000 I've been writing articles on this site about software, software design, the business of software, software management, and, um, well, software. (Notice a theme?) This is the complete list of articles. Everything I've ever written is still here... somewhere, if I can just find it.

Apress has published three books out of the articles on this site. If you prefer to read some of this stuff in dead trees format, the books have gone through a whole editing phase that the original articles didn't, and they're a bit more selective.

FULL LENGTH ARTICLES, in reverse chronological order:

Exploding Offer Season Nov 26 2008
How the StackOverflow Podcast is produced Oct 09 2008
Architecture astronauts take over May 01 2008
Martian Headsets Mar 17 2008
Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? (And some workarounds) Feb 19 2008
Five whys Jan 22 2008
Where there's muck, there's brass Dec 06 2007
Talk at Yale: Part 3 of 3 Dec 05 2007
Talk at Yale: Part 2 of 3 Dec 04 2007
Talk at Yale: Part 1 of 3 Dec 03 2007
Evidence Based Scheduling Oct 26 2007
Strategy Letter VI Sep 18 2007
Font smoothing, anti-aliasing, and sub-pixel rendering Jun 12 2007
A game of inches Jun 07 2007
Smart and Gets Things Done Jun 05 2007
Seven steps to remarkable customer service Feb 19 2007
Copilot 2.0 ships! Jan 26 2007
The Big Picture Jan 21 2007
Elegance Dec 15 2006
Simplicity Dec 09 2006
Choices = Headaches Nov 21 2006
The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (version 3.0) Oct 25 2006
The Phone Screen Oct 24 2006
Book Review: Beyond Java Oct 12 2006
Amazing X-Ray Glasses from Sprint! Sep 19 2006
Sorting Resumes Sep 08 2006
A Field Guide to Developers Sep 07 2006
Finding Great Developers Sep 06 2006
The Identity Management Method Aug 10 2006
The Econ 101 Management Method Aug 09 2006
The Command and Control Management Method Aug 08 2006
Three Management Methods (Introduction) Aug 07 2006
Can Your Programming Language Do This? Aug 01 2006
My First BillG Review Jun 16 2006
FogBugz 4½ and Subjective Well-Being May 16 2006
The Development Abstraction Layer Apr 11 2006
Foreword to “Eric Sink on the Business of Software” Apr 07 2006
Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality Jan 11 2006
The Perils of JavaSchools Dec 29 2005
Test Yourself Dec 29 2005
How to Ship Anything Dec 13 2005
Reading List: Fog Creek Software Management Training Program Nov 22 2005
Fog Creek Software Management Training Program Oct 26 2005
Set Your Priorities Oct 12 2005
The Project Aardvark Spec Aug 17 2005
Usability Testing with Morae Jul 30 2005
Hitting the High Notes Jul 25 2005
Project Aardvark Midterm Report Jul 07 2005
Introduction to Best Software Writing I Jun 20 2005
Wall Street Survival 101 May 20 2005
Making Wrong Code Look Wrong May 11 2005
The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part V Apr 01 2005
The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part IV Mar 31 2005
The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part III Mar 30 2005
The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part II Mar 29 2005
The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part I Mar 28 2005
Documentary Filmmaker Wanted Mar 23 2005
Foreword to Painless Project Management with FogBugz, by Mike Gunderloy Feb 11 2005
Colo Expansion Version 2.0 Feb 05 2005
Advice for Computer Science College Students Jan 02 2005
Camels and Rubber Duckies Dec 15 2004
The //comment FAQ! Dec 09 2004
It's Not Just Usability Sep 06 2004
Contents of Joel on Software, the Book Aug 19 2004
How Microsoft Lost the API War Jun 13 2004
Mike Gunderloy's Coder to Developer May 05 2004
Top Twelve Tips for Running a Beta Test Mar 02 2004
Please Sir May I Have a Linker? Jan 28 2004
Getting Your Résumé Read Jan 26 2004
Biculturalism Dec 14 2003
Craftsmanship Dec 01 2003
The Book Club Oct 16 2003
The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) Oct 08 2003
Bionic Office Sep 24 2003
Rick Chapman is In Search of Stupidity Aug 01 2003
Fixing Venture Capital Jun 03 2003
Finding an Office in New York City Mar 28 2003
Building Communities with Software Mar 03 2003
New Server at Peer 1 Network Feb 03 2003
Mouth Wide Shut Jan 15 2003
CityDesk Entity Classes Jan 03 2003
Lord Palmerston on Programming Dec 11 2002
The Law of Leaky Abstractions Nov 11 2002
Worst Project Ever? Sep 25 2002
Platforms Aug 30 2002
Strategy Letter V Jun 12 2002
Product Vision May 09 2002
2002/05/07 May 07 2002
Five Worlds May 06 2002
Our .NET Strategy Apr 11 2002
Picking a Ship Date Apr 09 2002
Nothing is as Simple as it Seems Mar 04 2002
The Iceberg Secret, Revealed Feb 13 2002
Rub a dub dub Jan 23 2002
Fire And Motion Jan 06 2002
Getting Things Done When You're Only a Grunt Dec 25 2001
Back to Basics Dec 11 2001
A Hard Drill Makes an Easy Battle Nov 20 2001
Working on CityDesk, Part Five Nov 13 2001
Working on CityDesk, Part Four Oct 29 2001
Working on CityDesk, Part Three Oct 17 2001
In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome Oct 14 2001
Working on CityDesk, Part Two Oct 13 2001
What Does CityDesk Do? Oct 12 2001
Working on CityDesk, Part One Oct 12 2001
Ask Joel Aug 22 2001
Hard-assed Bug Fixin' Jul 31 2001
Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it. Jul 21 2001
Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy Jun 21 2001
What is the Work of Dogs in this Country? May 05 2001
Are the Groove Designers Architecture Astronauts? Apr 22 2001
Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You Apr 21 2001
How Many Lies Can You Find In One Direct Mail Piece? Mar 24 2001
Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth Mar 23 2001
Spring in Cambridge Mar 19 2001
Human Task Switches Considered Harmful Feb 12 2001
Daily Builds Are Your Friend Jan 27 2001
Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef Jan 18 2001
The Ricochet Wireless Modem (a Review) Dec 20 2000
Up the tata without a tutu Dec 02 2000
Netscape Goes Bonkers Nov 20 2000
International Readers Nov 14 2000
Painless Bug Tracking Nov 08 2000
Another Business Model That Doesn't Seem to Work Oct 25 2000
Painless Functional Specifications - Part 4: Tips Oct 15 2000
Painless Functional Specifications - Part 3: But... How? Oct 04 2000
Painless Functional Specifications - Part 2: What's a Spec? Oct 03 2000
Painless Functional Specifications - Part 1: Why Bother? Oct 02 2000
Wasting Money on Cats Sep 12 2000
Fog Creek Compensation Aug 30 2000
Feedback on Programmer Compensation Aug 28 2000
How do You Compensate Programmers? Aug 27 2000
Three Wrong Ideas From Computer Science Aug 22 2000
The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code Aug 09 2000
Wordsworth Responds Aug 07 2000
Free Desktop Pictures! Aug 04 2000
The Wireless Web: Spacesuits Needed Jul 31 2000
Passport Responses Jul 28 2000
Does Issuing Passports Make Microsoft a Country? Jul 26 2000
Anonymous Response Jul 25 2000
Microsoft Goes Bonkers Jul 22 2000
Whaddaya Mean, You Can't Find Programmers? Jun 15 2000
REALBasic Jun 12 2000
Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back! Jun 03 2000
Reading Code is Like Reading the Talmud May 26 2000
Strategy Letter II: Chicken and Egg Problems May 24 2000
Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon May 12 2000
Auto motion in Excel? May 12 2000
Juggling Tasks in Excel May 08 2000
Top Five (Wrong) Reasons You Don't Have Testers Apr 30 2000
Where do These People Get Their (Unoriginal) Ideas? Apr 19 2000
Things You Should Never Do, Part I Apr 06 2000
Incentive Pay Considered Harmful Apr 03 2000
Painless Software Schedules Mar 29 2000
NDAs and Contracts That You Should Never Sign Mar 28 2000
The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing Mar 23 2000
Command and Conquer and the Herd of Coconuts Mar 23 2000
Converting Capital Into Software That Works Mar 21 2000
Two Stories Mar 19 2000
More on Sabbaticals... Mar 18 2000
Let's Take Sabbaticals! Dec 24 1999

USER INTERFACE DESIGN FOR PROGRAMMERS

A book about designing user interfaces, intended for software developers for whom the whole process is a bit of a mystery. Nine chapters are available on this site. A longer version is available in print from Apress.

Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

OLD FRONT PAGES

The front page of the site is meant for ephemera... things which are interesting, but not that interesting; certainly nothing worth looking back on. However for the sake of completeness it's all still here, and you can browse them one month at a time.

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In Memoriam, the page which replaced the Joel on Software homepage on 9/11/02.

Oh, and by the way: My company, Fog Creek Software, has paid internships in software development for qualified college students. They're in New York City. Free housing, lunch, and more. And you get to work on real, shipping software with the smartest developers in the business.

About the Author: I’m your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. For my day job, I run Fog Creek Software, makers of FogBugz—the smart bug tracking software with the stupid name, and Fog Creek Copilot—the easiest way to provide remote tech support over the Internet, with nothing to install or configure.

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