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Common programmer thought pattern: there are only three numbers: 0, 1, and n.

Joel Spolsky

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Joel Spolsky
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: January 1
Businessperson
Chief Executive Officer
Computer Scientist
Programmer
Software Engineer
Albuquerque
New Mexico
Avram Joel Spolsky
Pattern
Patterns
Numbers
Common
Three
Thought
Programmer
Programmers

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I've been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system - it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes.
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Design adds value faster than it adds cost.
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Nothing works better than just improving your product.
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Full service brokers, in this day and age of low cost mutual funds and discount brokers, are really nothing more than machines for ripping off retail investors.
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If something seems possible, that's probably because someone is already doing it. When something seems that it can't possibly work, nobody tries it. Real innovation happens when someone tries anyway, overlooking an obvious flaw, and finds a way to make an idea work.
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Writing code is not production, it's not always craftsmanship though it can be, it's design.
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Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.
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Beware of Methodologies. They are a great way to bring everyone up to a dismal, but passable, level of performance, but at the same time, they are aggravating to more talented people who chafe at the restrictions that are placed on them.
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That's another flaw with performance-based rewards: They are easy for one of your competitors to top.
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Good software, like wine, takes time.
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Software development takes immense intellectual effort. Even the best programmers can rarely sustain that level of effort for more than a few hours a day. Beyond that, they need to rest their brains a bit, which is why they always seem to be surfing the Internet or playing games when you barge in on them.
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Talk to your customers. Find out what they need. Don't pay any attention to the competition. They're not relevant to you.
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If your goals is to produce something of permanent value, you start to think differently about you want on the site.
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There's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. [...] The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming: It's harder to read code than to write it.
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Listen to your customers, not your competitors.
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Never put yourself in a position that will put yourself at risk if you make the wrong decision. We spent cash on everything. It's fashionable to make 'bet the company' decisions, but don't do it.
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People ridiculously overvalue aesthetics and beauty when evaluating products. It's one of the reasons iPods, and, for that matter, Keanu Reeves, are so successful.
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So if you want to get things done, you positively have to understand at any given point in time what is the most important thing to get done right now and if you're not doing it, you're not making progress at the fastest possible rate.
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Remember, just because Microsoft can do something, doesn't mean you can. Microsoft makes their own gravity. Normal rules don't apply to them.
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Entrepreneurship boils down to the simple fact that a team of really smart people who can get things done are going to get smart, useful things done.
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