By Peter Bell

Joel on Failure

Posted At : January 22, 2007 12:44 PM | Posted By : Peter Bell
Related Categories: Specification, Misc
Joel Spolsky just posted a nice review of "Dreaming in code". It was conceived of as a book about an amazing piece of software and ended up being a book about why smart teams don’t always ship.

The line in the review that resonated most for me?

"Whenever the spec describes the product in terms of adjectives (“it will be extremely cool”) rather than specifics (“it will have brushed-aluminum title bars and all the icons will be reflected a little bit, as if placed on a grand piano”) you know you’re in trouble."

I think I’m going to add that to my training materials for our design partners, because whenever a member of the client team comes into a project meeting and tries to “design by adjective”, I know it is probably the beginning of the end of the project.

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I've been seeing a lot about Joel lately. I mean, I first read his blog in December 2006, on the referral of a friend at school. Since them, I've seen him referenced by at least 3 separate "groups" of developers I frequent.

Anyway, I find it a good read.
# Posted By Sammy Larbi | 1/22/07 4:05 PM
The cool thing about Joel is is that he isn't some internet boom smart ass script kiddie. This guy has been in the industry for a long time now and worked in some interesting places. Futhermore, and even more important, he know's his stuff. On top of that he's down to earth and to the point. He also has a excellent way of exactly expressing that what programmers usually think and have usually trouble with expressing. Like explaning to a manager why things take longer... etc.
# Posted By pan69 | 1/22/07 4:14 PM
@Sammy - Lots of cool stuff - ALMOST (but not quite) as good as Paul Graham. Out of interest, what are the other groups? Always like to learn from cross pollination . . .

@Pan Agreed. Seems like he learnt some good things from his time at Microsoft. Will be interesting to see how his focus "on the team not the product" will pan out at Fogcreek. I'm always interested in his approaches to management and hiring as well as the technical stuff.
# Posted By Peter Bell | 1/22/07 4:35 PM
Peter- The other groups were (if I recall correctly) in the agile camp. Not on a blog or anything, just in the mailing lists. I'm thinking XP and TDD, but it might have been Scrum? I don't know for sure, I read a lot of mail =).

Other than that, I also happened across his site from (I want to say) clicking a link on a general software development blog (not associated with the CF or Adobe community). But, I was surfing that day, and unfortunately, I don't have history from a couple of weeks ago.

Wish I could be more helpful. I can provide links to the agile mailing lists, if you like =).
# Posted By Sammy Larbi | 1/22/07 5:49 PM
Yeah - hit me offline with the Agile mailing list info. I'll drop u a line!
# Posted By Peter Bell | 1/22/07 5:53 PM
After getting my email from http://www.infoq.com today and reading it, I realized that I may have seen a link to Joel from a story there, or the comments.
# Posted By Sam | 1/23/07 12:37 PM
Hi Sam,

Ahh, good link! I like some of the interviews and mini-books they do there! Thanks!

Hey - get that IM set up some time :->
# Posted By Peter Bell | 1/23/07 12:41 PM
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