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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
Three
Thought
Programmer
Programmers
Pattern
Patterns
Numbers
Common

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Life is a bit hard sometimes, and sometimes you have to step up and fight fights that you never signed up for.
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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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An idea isn't worth that much. It's the execution of the idea that has value. If you can't convince one other person that this is something to devote your life to, then it's not worth it.
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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 you can't understand the spec for a new technology, don't worry: nobody else will understand it either, and the technology won't be that important.
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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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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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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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Not having a schedule is OK if it's your PhD and you plan to spend 14 years on the thing, or if you're a programmer working on the next Duke Nukem and we'll ship when we're good and ready. But for almost any kind of real business, you just have to know how long things are going to take, because developing a product costs money.
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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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Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.
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We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.
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Nothing works better than just improving your product.
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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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Design adds value faster than it adds cost.
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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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Listen to your customers, not your competitors.
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