[Scriptor]

I'd say it's not worthwhile to write about programming if people already have high expectations for you. Spolsky is definitely well-known and some people probably view him as somewhat full of himself, so they like to pick out anything that might hurt his image.

For the average joe schmoe programmer, people don't have such expectations, so there is far less negative reaction. Also, personality does play a huge role. Someone who doesn't seem too aloof and distant from other people will be better off (take _why for example).

[petercooper]

Someone who doesn't seem to aloof and distant from other people will be better off (take _why for example).

_why isn't the best example - he was awesome, but part of his appeal was that he was distant and not on the same plane as the rest of us.. just not in a negative way. Nonetheless, before he disappeared he tweeted:

programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more.

Even though he didn't attract much negativity due to his whimsical, impenetrable persona, it didn't seem to help him feel much better about his excellent work.

[amackera]

This is something that has bothered me a lot in the past. Other engineers build bridges and towers and monuments that stand for years and years. The beautiful code written by a good programmer might be replaced 8 months later by a junior who doesn't understand it.

I suppose in our profession we are able to perpetuate ourselves by communicating our ideas into the world. Our influence is felt in posterity through the inspiration of thought in our successors. The kernel may evolve over time, but its evolution may be guided by the initial conditions of its initial code base (and subsequent changes).

A civil engineer may be directly remembered by the the bridge that bears his or her name; a software engineer may be indirectly remembered by the smart code he or she has written.

[aristus]

Comparing a Rails library to a bridge isn't quite right. Most things lone hackers write are bike sheds and family homes. No one builds a bridge alone.

You want a legacy? Move up the food chain and start discovering new data structures and algorithms. Or work on a large project like GMail.

[rapind]

What I love about that comment by _why is that in my own experience the code I'm least proud of lives on and on and on... Someone please replace it.

[jrockway]

It's worth noting that Spolsky writes about programmers, not programming. Everything he says is opinion, and as a result, it tends to spawn a lot of critical comments. ("Your employer hates you if you don't have an Aeron chair." Maybe, maybe not.)

Writing about programming -- techniques, thought processes, libraries, and code -- is highly valuable, at least in my opinion.

[blubb]

He's actually written quite a bit about programming, but over the years he's (naturally) shifted to writing more about the business of software development and how to run a software business. He's clearly opinionated, but his opinions are still valuable.

[jrockway]

When he writes about programming, he tends to be wrong. His thoughts on "leaky abstraction" and "architecture astronauts" are ... wrong.

[cookiecaper]

Most of the generic pontificating I find on the run-of-the-mill programming blog just seems like a marketing ploy to me. I worked with a guy who updates his blog almost every day, sometimes more than once, and always syndicates it onto Facebook, but it's all for marketing, and it's really annoying, because the post basically just boils down to "X is cool, here are a few paragraphs about what I like about it, I can implement it for your business!"

On the other hand, posts that are informed by real-world experience and stories that discuss specific implementations are almost always at least somewhat interesting. This is what Joel came up on; he became well-known because his blog detailed hiring practices and how they've worked out for his company, certain strategies and fallacies at Juno, Microsoft, and Fog Creek, and the outcomes of them, and informed analyses of progress at the institutions wherein he has specific knowledge (primarily Fog Creek, I reckon).

Joel's posts were interesting because he had a lot of stories and a lot of anecdotes to back them up. His blog doesn't simply say, "I think if you give programmers offices with good equipment you'll end with some pretty good programmers", but "I thought if you gave programmers offices and good equipment you'd get good programmers, so here at Fog Creek we do that. Here are some pictures. When I was at Microsoft, everyone was sad because middle-management got the glory and the offices. At Fog Creek, we focus on our programmers, and it greatly increases our productivity, morale, etc.". One of these is much more interesting.

[mattmanser]

lol, even this is an attack on Joel!

"full of himself", "aloof and distant", "For the average joe schmoe programmer (implying only they can appreciate his work)"

[Scriptor]

I was trying to describe how people who attack him think of him. Also, by "average joe schmoe" I meant someone who, among other things, hasn't published an entire book.