The Joel on Software Book

Filed in archive Business on November 4, 2005

I like to read a good book and one that I just finished reading turned out to be much better then I had expected. The book is titled "Joel on Software" and it is not your average book. I first ran across the weblog Joel on Software last year. I subscribe to it's RSS feed and find that Joel Spolsky's articles are very insightful (he has over 15,000 subscribers). He always seems to have a point of view that is just a bit different and just a bit more articulate than most people.

The book covers a whole range of topics related to software development, programming and business. There were a number of times while I was reading it where I thought to myself "wow... I'm not the only person who has encountered that problem."

Anyway back to the reason why I think this is not your average book. Although the content of the book is entertaining and insightful it is where the content came from that I found most interesting. Joel's content for the book all came from articles he originally posted to his weblog. He simply repackaged the articles in such a way as to make them come together in a very good book. In recent months I've heard quite a few Internet marketing guru's talk about this type of thing but Joel Spolsky seems to have done this a while ago.

I recommend this book to any software developer who aspires to be an entrepreneur. If you are too cheap to buy the book you could probably find the articles on the Joel on Software site. However, by buying the book you get everything in one place and in an order that is easily read. It is worth the money in my opinion.