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

More quotes by Joel Spolsky

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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.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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Common programmer thought pattern: there are only three numbers: 0, 1, and n.
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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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Last week I was listening to a podcast on Hanselminutes, with Robert Martin talking about the SOLID principles... They all sounded to me like extremely bureaucratic programming that came from the mind of somebody that has not written a lot of code, frankly.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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That's another flaw with performance-based rewards: They are easy for one of your competitors to top.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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Good software, like wine, takes time.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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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.
Joel Spolsky
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We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.
Joel Spolsky