Joel Spolsky Quotes

Listen to your customers, not your competitors.

Nothing works better than just improving your product.

If your goals is to produce something of permanent value, you start to think differently about you want on the site.

Every day that we spent not improving our products was a wasted day.

Talk to your customers. Find out what they need. Don't pay any attention to the competition. They're not relevant to you.

People ridiculously overvalue aesthetics and beauty when evaluating products. It's one of the reasons iPods, and, for that matter, Keanu Reeves, are so successful.

Life is a bit hard sometimes, and sometimes you have to step up and fight fights that you never signed up for.

Design adds value faster than it adds cost.

A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would.

Good software, like wine, takes time.

Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.

Writing code is not production, it's not always craftsmanship though it can be, it's design.

Never put yourself in a position that will put yourself at risk if you make the wrong decision. We spent cash on everything. It's fashionable to make 'bet the company' decisions, but don't do it.

That's another flaw with performance-based rewards: They are easy for one of your competitors to top.

It's harder to read code than to write it.

The secret of Big Macs is that they're not very good, but every one is not very good in exactly the same way.

An idea isn't worth that much. It's the execution of the idea that has value. If you can't convince one other person that this is something to devote your life to, then it's not worth it.

Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected.

If you can't understand the spec for a new technology, don't worry: nobody else will understand it either, and the technology won't be that important.

Entrepreneurship boils down to the simple fact that a team of really smart people who can get things done are going to get smart, useful things done.

We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.

All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky.

Remember, just because Microsoft can do something, doesn't mean you can. Microsoft makes their own gravity. Normal rules don't apply to them.

Common programmer thought pattern: there are only three numbers: 0, 1, and n.

Indeed one of the best ways to deflect attacks is to make it look like they're succeeding. It's the software equivalent of playing dead.

Full service brokers, in this day and age of low cost mutual funds and discount brokers, are really nothing more than machines for ripping off retail investors.