Joel on Software's Best Software Essays of 2004

I noticed in my referral logs that a previous post of mine about Excellence in Software Development was nominated for the "Joel On Software" best Software Essays of 2004. If you haven't read that previous post yet, please do so. I'm impressed that "schmoe" found that post enlightening enough to nominate. It is certainly not the best work on the subject that could be done, rather reflections that came to me at 1:40 AM that evening/morning. Perhaps this is what blogging is about - a slice of time or history that impacted the blogger in some way that he or she felt important enough to share with others.

The nominator mentioned that my post is similar to the "Personal Character" chapter in Code Complete 2nd Edition. Sadly, I have not completed reading that book (including chapter 33) - it keeps getting pushed aside for other books because I read the 1st edition long ago. I'll have to put the book back to the top of the queue to catch this reference. I'm sure that I'd agree with Steve McConnell's philosophy - I have in the past.

Joel publishing a collection of these essays is a good thing, especially since he is so well respected in the community. Hopefully, he will allow some editing if that post is chosen - without having link context some of the points don't make sense, which is typical of a blog entry. If you don't read Joel, you probably should.

I haven't read many of the other ones nominated. I have read Joel's excellent essay on how Microsoft lost the API war. I disagree with Joel on "the new API is HTML" conclusion, but the points that he makes are well done. Perhaps I will blog a review of some of these other nominated articles after I catch up on some now mandatory reading at the expense of Steve McConnell.