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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.

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
Decision
Company
Wrong
Fashionable
Everything
Cash
Make
Decisions
Never
Spent
Risk
Position

More quotes by Joel Spolsky

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Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected.
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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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That's another flaw with performance-based rewards: They are easy for one of your competitors to top.
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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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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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Design adds value faster than it adds cost.
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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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Common programmer thought pattern: there are only three numbers: 0, 1, and n.
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We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.
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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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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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Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.
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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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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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The secret of Big Macs is that they're not very good, but every one is not very good in exactly the same way.
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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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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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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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Writing code is not production, it's not always craftsmanship though it can be, it's design.
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Good software, like wine, takes time.
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