Programmer Musings

Review of The Best Software Writing I

The Best Software Writing I
Joel Spolsky (editor)
Apress, 2005

Despite plenty of examples to the contrary, there is actually some good writing out there on various software subjects. Even though most of what you can read on the subject (on and off the web) is not particularly well-written, there are some gems out there. In this book, Joel Spolsky attempts to show how some good examples would look.

Joel and the team at Apress have collected together 29 articles from various authors writing on software subjects. These essays show the qualities that Joel believes embody good writing. Joel introduces each essay in his own ... unique style. Although I have disagreed with some of Joel's arguments in the past, I have to admit that he did a great job of finding well-written articles.

The topics range from technical articles on programming topics to the business of software to the human side of the business, and many points in between. As with any diverse body of work you may find, as I did, that you don't agree with some of the positions taken by the authors. However, each article was so well written that even if you don't fully agree with the author's position, you will still learn quite a bit by reading it. With so many different authors, you are also exposed to a large number of styles, from cartoons to essays. But each one is easy and enjoyable to read.

If you are looking for purely technical articles, containing nothing but language tricks and programmign techniques, you might want to take a pass on this book. Many of the articles cover some of the non-technical aspects of software development. In many ways, that caused me to enjoy the book more. I have loads of books on the technical side of software development, but good articles that help us understand the business side of things seem to be more rare.

In addition, I found a couple of the articles introduced me to new weblogs that I plan to follow for some time to come. (Thanks, Joel. As if I needed to lose any more time to extraneous reading.<grin/>)

Unlike most of the books I review here, this book makes a pretty good book to unwind with. Instead of forcing more technical material into your brain, take a look at this one and give yourself some time to relax.