[nir]

%99 of the time, Joel-style posts about programming in general are a boring rehash of ideas already expressed better before (often by Joel himself). Same goes for "10 things every start up should know" etc. They're great for HN karma, poor as reading material.

Blog posts about actual programming, as in "here's how I implemented x" are almost always a great read, and if they are really good they will sustain their value for a long time and reach far beyond the blog's readership as they start appearing in Google searches etc.

It's all about signal vs noise. You may have a great insight, but if Joel/37 Signals/Coding Horror/etc already wrote about it you're just adding more noise.

[adriand]

I agree 100%. There's a million posts by people (like Mark Cuban for example) full of the same old boring crap: "maintain good communication", "don't spend money on swag / unnecessary items / etc.", blah blah blah.

If generalized advice actually worked for human beings, the entire human race would probably be a lot better off.

In practice, I find it hard to believe that anyone takes these lists of dos and don'ts and actually turns them into guiding principles for how they run their business.

[zaidf]

I disagree. I think the repetition is critical, at least for me, simply because I tend to apply more of messages I recieve again and again. On paper what you say makes sense(repetitive content = noise) but in practice there's still value in repeating certain messages.

[philk]

To be honest it's more that the vast bulk of people read these things then do whatever they were already planning to do.

Losing weight, for example, should be really simple but there's a boatload of people out there who don't seem to be able to follow the "heavy weightlifting + calorie controlled diet" advice.