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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. |