Alas Poor Spolsky

I've been reading Joel on Software since it was hosted by Dave Winer at joel.editthispage.com (about 1999 or 2000 if you are counting).

Until a few months ago. I deleted my RSS feed from his site because there wasn't anything that interesting on there. (By the way, I have no idea if he had an RSS feed back then - if he did, I wouldn't have known what to do with it). He has written some classics. The Joel Test. Fire and Motion. How Microsoft Lost the API War (my absolute favourite, which, coupled with John Gruber's follow-up The Location Field is the new Command-Line made me ditch desktop applications and look totally to the web). And the thing is it was a genius marketing strategy. His flag-ship product, FogBugz sells extremely well with minimal marketing spend, no advertising and no sales force. A product aimed at developers in business sold through a blog about how to become a better business developer.

But in recent months there has not really been anything worth reading. I think others may have also stopped visiting the site - and now Joel has noticed because he is back. With a vengeance. The problem is before he wrote considered articles about how to run a software business. About how developers are the most important people in a software business. How strategies that, on the surface, do not make sense can actually be your greatest asset.

No more. I think, in order to build the hits on his site he is just deliberately trolling. And it would appear that DHH is not amused.