Essential Reading 1

Ok, as promised here are some of the blogs that I read and continue to enjoy:

  1. Joel on Software – an absolute bucket full of fantastic articles (I think Joel lists 1081 articles).  I tend to agree with most of what Joel has to say and he manages to get the point across in an often amusing and well thought out manner.  I’ll probably do another post covering some of my particular favourites.
  2. Eric Sink – Another source of some great reading.  He has 3 general areas of interest: Source Control, Marketing for Geeks, and the Business of Software.  I particularly like the insights into the Business of Software and Marketing for Geeks where he often talks about Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Micro-ISVs.  Again, probably worth another post talking about some of my favourites.
  3. Paul Graham – A fantastic collection of short and easily readable essays on startups and software life.

There are many others that I keep an eye on, but these are the 3 that I put on my Essential Reading list.  I’ll also include The Ramblings of a Hatter on here as a blog I always read, although I’m sure Joshua would be the first to admit his writing is not really in the same league at the other’s on my list.

I also sign up to the Macadamian’s Critical Path newsletter.  This arrives in my Inbox about once a month with an insightful discussion on some aspect of software development.  You can read the back issues on line at http://www.macadamian.com/insight/critical_path.

Finally, I’d like to point to stackoverflow as a great way to get quality answers to you technical questions.  For instance I asked Are programmer incentives a good idea?“. Take a look at some of the answers – very useful stuff indeed!

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Hello world!

Ok, lets get this first post out of the way – Hello World!

This blog will be used to collect together my thoughts and useful resources on all things related to creating software.  This includes the:

  • Technical stuff; both hardware and software
  • Processes involved with creating software
  • Dealing with people; both as part of the software team and outside the team.

I hope that by pulling together my thoughts into this single location I’ll be able to form a complete philosophy or “guide book” to creating software successfully.

In my next post I’ll start revealing some of the resources on the Internet that have influenced my thinking over the years.

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