Best Software Writing I

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.

• THE BEST SOFTWARE WRITING I Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky Copyright (c) 2005 Edited by Joel Spolsky All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN (pbk): 1-59059-500-9 Printed and bound in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Trademarked names may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Lead Editor: Gary Cornell Editorial Board: Steve Anglin, Dan Appleman, Ewan Buckingham, Gary Cornell, Tony Davis, Jason Gilmore, Jonathan Hassell, Chris Mills, Dominic Shakeshaft, Jim Sumser Assistant Publisher: Grace Wong Project Manager: Beth Christmas Copy Edit Manager: Nicole LeClerc Copy Editor: Liz Welch Production Manager: Kari Brooks-Copony Production Editor: Kelly Winquist Compositor: Dina Quan Proofreader: Nancy Sixsmith Indexer: Broccoli Information Management Cover Designer: Kurt Krames Manufacturing Manager: Tom Debolski Licensing: Tina Nielsen Distributed to the book trade in the United States by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013, and outside the United States by Springer-Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69112 Heidelberg, Germany. In the United States: phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax 201-348-4505, e-mail orders@springer-ny.com, or visit http://www.springer-ny.com. Outside the United States: fax +49 6221 345229, e-mail orders@springer.de, or visit http://www.springer.de. For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2560 Ninth Street, Suite 219, Berkeley, CA 94710. Phone 510-549-5930, fax 510-549-5939, e-mail info@apress.com, or visit http://www.apress.com. The information in this book is distributed on an as is basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author(s) nor Apress shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this work. CONTENTS About the Editor ... vii About the Authors ... ix Introduction ... xv Ken Arnold Style Is Substance ... 1 Leon Bambrick Award for the Silliest User Interface: Windows Search ... 7 Michael Bean The Pitfalls of Outsourcing Programmers . . 9 Rory Blyth Excel as a Database ... 17 Adam Bosworth ICSOC04 Talk ... 23 danah boyd Autistic Social Software ... 35 Raymond Chen Why Not Just Block the Apps That Rely on Undocumented Behavior? ... 47 Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi Kicking the Llama ... 51 Cory Doctorow Save Canada s Internet from WIPO ... 53 ea_spouse EA: The Human Story ... 59 Bruce Eckel Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing ... 67 Paul Ford Processing Processing ... 79 Paul Graham Great Hackers ... 95 John Gruber The Location Field Is the New Command Line ... 111 Gregor Hohpe Starbucks Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit ... 119 Ron Jeffries Passion ... 125 Eric Johnson C++ The Forgotten Trojan Horse ... 129 Eric Lippert How Many Microsoft Employees Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb? ... 135 Michael Rands Lopp What to Do When You re Screwed ... 139 Larry Osterman Larry s Rules of Software Engineering #2: Measuring Testers by Test Metrics Doesn t ... 151 Mary Poppendieck Team Compensation ... 157 Rick Schaut Mac Word 6.0 ... 171 Clay Shirky A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ... 183 Clay Shirky Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software ... 211 Eric Sink Closing the Gap, Part 1 ... 223 Eric Sink Closing the Gap, Part 2 ... 233 Eric Sink Hazards of Hiring ... 247 Aaron Swartz PowerPoint Remix ... 261 why the lucky stiff A Quick (and Hopefully Painless) Ride Through Ruby (with Cartoon Foxes) ... 267 Index ... 293 Contents vi