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The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky 1st ed. Edition

by Avram Joel Spolsky (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 42 ratings
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It's nice having a collection of high-quality writing related to software and the business in one place instead of trawling the Web for it. Meryl K. Evans, meryl. ...an entertaining read with a number of enlightening insights into what I do for a living... The whole book is fantastic though, and you should absolutely pick it up...in dead tree form. This is a book worth checking out, even if you're not a software developer.

With a nod to both the serious and funny sides of technical writing, The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky is an entertaining read and a guide to the technical writing literati.

The Best Software Writing contains writings from:

  • Ken Arnold
  • Leon Bambrick
  • Michael Bean
  • Rory Blyth
  • Adam Bosworth
  • danah boyd
  • Raymond Chen
  • Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi
  • Cory Doctorow
  • ea_spouse
  • Bruce Eckel
  • Paul Ford
  • Paul Graham
  • John Gruber
  • Gregor Hohpe
  • Ron Jeffries
  • Eric Johnson
  • Eric Lippert
  • Michael Lopp
  • Larry Osterman
  • Mary Poppendieck
  • Rick Schaut
  • Aaron Swart
  • Clay Shirky
  • Eric Sink
  • why the lucky stiff

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  1. ISBN-10
    1590595009
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1590595008
  3. Edition
    1st ed.
  4. Publisher
    Apress
  5. Publication date
    June 30, 2005
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.01 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
  8. Print length
    346 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joel Spolsky is a globally recognized expert on the software development process. His web site Joel on Software (JoelonSoftware.com) is popular with software developers around the world and has been translated into over 30 languages. As the founder of Fog Creek Software in New York City, he created FogBugz, a popular project management system for software teams. Joel has worked at Microsoft, where he designed Visual Basic for Applications as a member of the Excel team, and at Juno Online Services, developing an Internet client used by millions. He has written two books: User Interface Design for Programmers (Apress, 2001) and Joel on Software (Apress, 2004). Joel holds a bachelor's of science degree in computer science from Yale University. Before college, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces as a paratrooper, and he was one of the founders of Kibbutz Hanaton.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Apress; 1st ed. edition (June 30, 2005)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 346 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1590595009
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590595008
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.32 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.01 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 42 ratings

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  1. Joel Spolsky

    Joel Spolsky

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  2. danah boyd

    danah boyd

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    danah boyd is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, the Founder of Data & Society, and a Visiting Professor at New York University. Her research examines the intersection of technology, society, and youth culture. Currently, she's focused on research questions related to "big data", privacy and publicity, youth meanness and cruelty, and civil rights.

    To learn more about danah, check out her website: http://www.danah.org/ or visit her blog: Apophenia - http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/

    You can also find danah on Twitter @zephoria

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
42 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the content insightful, terrific, and helpful for software companies. They also say the writing quality is consistently good.

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ContentWriting quality
4 customers mention "Content"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the book's content insightful, interesting, and well written. They also say the introductions are good and add to the experience. Readers also mention that the compilation is terrific and helpful for software companies.

"...His writing style is plain-spoken and filled with interesting anecdotes that hold the reader's attention while he teaches them something good." Read more

"...Anyway, this compilation is terrific." Read more

"...And cartoon foxes! Not to be missed.Joel's introductions are generally good and add to the experience...." Read more

"It is very help for the software company!If you can implement some of the tips, your company will change in deep I think!" Read more

3 customers mention "Writing quality"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing quality of the book consistently good.

"...His writing style is plain-spoken and filled with interesting anecdotes that hold the reader's attention while he teaches them something good." Read more

"...Two words: Eric Sink. Eric is an incredibly good writer, who of course, has at least one of his own books as well...." Read more

"...of whether they've been published before or not, the writing is consistently good...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome book!
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2024
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Awesome book! Still relevant in 2024.
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D. Siah
5.0 out of 5 stars What does good writing (in Software) look like?
Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2018
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Read this book if you are a software developer. The book is clearly intended to get people in software to read more of their peers more outstanding writings/opinions on the matter. Why? Simply put software engineers and the family of similar roles are highly dependent on good communication, however good writing skills are seemingly deficient in the field. By reading (and ideally going on and writing) these samples the author intends get people to consider what good communication (primarily persuasive writing) looks like.

The best part is how wildly strange some of the opinions in the book are. Consider an essay where the thesis is that check-styles should through compile time errors. I mentioned this essay to some of my colleagues and it clearly sparks debate, most people disagree with the statement and have great arguments.

Zeal is bountiful in the software industry yet many people are shy to start or don't know what good writing looks like applied to this field. So if you are a developer or manager in the industry do yourself (and teammates) a favor and read/share this book. If you enjoy this book, you'll definitely enjoy the author's own blog joelonsoftware.com and other writers on the topic. It's the good kind of rabbit hole.
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Sergey
5.0 out of 5 stars joel is smart and insightful
Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2013
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If you're interested in the business of software, Joel Spolsky is a name that should definitely be on your bookshelf. He is smart, experienced, and has a wealth of knowledge to share. His writing style is plain-spoken and filled with interesting anecdotes that hold the reader's attention while he teaches them something good.
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Greg Tomkins
5.0 out of 5 stars Sink or Swim
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2007
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I reread this book the other day, and I had forgotten how much I love it. Two words: Eric Sink. Eric is an incredibly good writer, who of course, has at least one of his own books as well. Anyway, this compilation is terrific.
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Henrik Warne
4.0 out of 5 stars Many gems in this varied mix
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2005
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This is a collection of 29 essays about software development, selected and introduced by Joel Spolsky (of Joel on Software fame).

I've been a regular reader of Joel's site for many years, and many of the themes Joel has been writing about (social software, outsourcing, the dangers of measuring the performance of individuals using simple bug metrics, and sales and marketing of software) are reflected in the included essays.

Many of the authors have already published books of their own (Bruce Eckel, Paul Graham, Mary Poppendieck and Ron Jeffries come to mind), but regardless of whether they've been published before or not, the writing is consistently good. This isn't surprising, since according to the back cover, the goal of the book is to show-case good writing, and since Joel himself is a very good writer.

I had read a few of the essays before the book was published (and in the case of "Great Hackers" by Paul Graham, I had actually listen to it, thanks to ITConversations), but most of them were new to me. They cover a lot of different angles on software development, from how to format your code, to forced overtime.

The best essays in my opinion are "The Pitfalls of Outsourcing Programmers" (a short but well argued piece on why outsourcing many times isn't such a good idea), "Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing" (on the benefits of automatic unit tests) and "Style is Substance" (why not standardizing on one coding style - why not indeed).

Actually, as I look through the contents to pick which essays I liked the most, it is hard to choose. Many of them are really good. I have to pick a few more: "Measuring Testers by Test Metrics Doesn't" (with a great example of exactly how this can create a lot of extra work without adding any value), and the cleverly named "How Many Microsoft Employees Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?" (explaining how a seemingly small change ripples through a big company).

Also, honorable mentions to Clay Shirky's two entries about social software (I had read both before, but they are very insightful and worth re-reading) and to Eric Sink's about software sales and marketing.

The least interesting for me were "Processing Processing" (musings on the nature of the web) and "Passion" (about passion for programming, which is a good subject, but this essay just didn't work for me).

There are also a couple of entries in the "Humor" category. The second essay is a hilarious send-up of the crappy Windows search, and the last essay made me laugh aloud several times. It's a quick tour of Ruby (the programming language), but with lots of stream-of-consciousness side tracks. And cartoon foxes! Not to be missed.

Joel's introductions are generally good and add to the experience. There is also a liberal sprinkling of footnotes, where Joel explains certain names and terms. Mostly this is OK, but it goes over-board sometimes. Given that this presumably is a book the will mostly be read by software developers, do we really need explanations of API-call, iTunes or Skype?

I suspect this collection will be followed by a "The Best Software Writing II", and I'm looking forward to reading that one too. By the way, since all the essays were culled from the web, you can probably find all of them just by surfing. But for me, it was worth it to have them all collected in book-form.

To summarize, a varied collection of interesting and well written essays on software development. Recommended.
8 people found this helpful
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LIUGANNING
5.0 out of 5 stars Good guide
Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2012
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It is very help for the software company!
If you can implement some of the tips, your company will change in deep I think!
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Richard B. Way
2.0 out of 5 stars Hit and miss and pretty off topic
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2005
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Being familiar with Joel's website, and judging by the title of the book and the excepts I had seen I bought this book expecting it to be about software development. Success and failure stories of projects, designs, development, testing and deployments. What works for people? how much abstraction is good? What testing methods and tools work well and how to use them? Stuff like that. What I found however is that this collection of stories and essays has very little to do with software writing. It would be more correct to entitle is "The best of writing by people loosely related to software development." While some of it does go over some great aspects of development (The articles on social software are excellent!) there are some article that are completely assinine. For example a chapter where the author describe the best 'hacker' recruitment style, including all the offerings of your mother's basement. The author also goes to great extents to chastise anyone who isn't a python developer. There are also many articles on managing intelligence production teams(Software development, testing, deploying, etc...) and while these article were neat, they had nothing to do with the actual writing of software. Over all I was greatly disappointed in the book, and it would have been a complete waste had it not been for the (very few) burried gems in the rough and the social software articles.
17 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in India on July 2, 2018
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one of the best
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Toby Allen
5.0 out of 5 stars This is great.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2005
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I like this book. I have been a reader of Joel Spolskys website for many years now, and enjoy his irreverent style and interesting analysis, so any writing he reckons is good enough to put in a book is worth reading as far as I'm concerned. This book begins to treat people who are interested in software as normal people rather than A. Dummies B. Nerds or C. People with too much money who are willing to buy books that dont really tell you anything.
The book itself is made up of articles (from 1 page to a 10) taken from websites, and have everything from cartoon foxes to stick men with fangs. The articles are all inspiring, entertaining or interesting or all three. This book is well worth the purchas price.
I'm looking forward to II
15 people found this helpful
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CSOMÁK GÁBOR
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2016
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Must have for every software developer
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