threehv

You’ve probably seen the article about working at Google, but I prefer this one about managing software developers. A subject very close to my battered, bruised and angry heart.

I feel much the same way about my Powerbook … only three years old but battered, limping and in a state where those with less faith would begin to call time on it. I reckon I’ve got about three good years left! (link via Mr Gruber).

In other news, Joel Spolsky has won. I have resubscribed to his feed.

I’ve been reading Joel on Software since it was hosted by Dave Winer at joel.editthispage.com (about 1999 or 2000 if you are counting).

Until a few months ago. I deleted my RSS feed from his site because there wasn’t anything that interesting on there. (By the way, I have no idea if he had an RSS feed back then – if he did, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it). He has written some classics. The Joel Test. Fire and Motion. How Microsoft Lost the API War (my absolute favourite, which, coupled with John Gruber’s follow-up The Location Field is the new Command-Line made me ditch desktop applications and look totally to the web). And the thing is it was a genius marketing strategy. His flag-ship product, FogBugz sells extremely well with minimal marketing spend, no advertising and no sales force. A product aimed at developers in business sold through a blog about how to become a better business developer.

But in recent months there has not really been anything worth reading. I think others may have also stopped visiting the site – and now Joel has noticed because he is back. With a vengeance. The problem is before he wrote considered articles about how to run a software business. About how developers are the most important people in a software business. How strategies that, on the surface, do not make sense can actually be your greatest asset.

No more. I think, in order to build the hits on his site he is just deliberately trolling. And it would appear that DHH is not amused.

I’ve noticed an increasing number of referrals from Django newsgroups and sites. Welcome!

Does this mean that Django is building enough of a critical mass that people are moving from the “enthusiast” stage to the “how do I get this out into the real world” stage? Exactly where I was, with Rails, about a year ago?

I hope so. Python is good. Most of the time I think Python code looks better than Ruby code. And looks are important. But Django does not look as good as Rails and nothing beats blocks and the Smalltalk collections.

No updates for a month. Sorry. It’s August. Holidays and all that.

Normal service will be resumed shortly. I have a couple of RForward installations to do, so no doubt, there will be some code changes needed. I’ve also set up a subversion repository for the code – more details on that soon enough.