This could be exciting times, Joel Spolksy has publically stated his
retirement from blogging effective March 18th, the 10-year anniversary of Joel on Software.
Love him or hate him you have to admire what he managed to do – get people talking, thinking and debating. Drawing many out of their shells, and encouraging them to have an opinion.
It appeared quite obvious that Joel’s heart was not into blogging ( the subjective opinion form anyway ) for a while now – that was primarily left to Coding Horror to do.
So why am I excited ? … well because his intent is not to disappear, but to put his efforts into something else – and that excites me. Anyone who has the tenacity for a decade to dedicate themselves to provocative writing ( and all the personal backlash that comes with that – for every fanatic follower Joel has/had he has equally vigilant detractors ) – is surely going to add value else where.
And what is that – well he hints to this :
We need something that is more objective (based on measurable truth and falseness rather than just lists of anecdotes about successful projects and failed projects). We need something that reflects the best new ideas about what authorship means in 2010, not just electronic forms of 18th-century pamphlets
Again this excites me – if Joel is 1 tenth as successful in his ability to pull people up the path of talking about software ( software subjectivity ), and apply this to his new goal which appears to software objectivity, with what I am sure will still be his brand of straight talk – it is sure to be valuable.
I hope that is another step in the maturing of software development as a whole.
Good Luck Joel.
