The Software Essays that Shaped Me

refactoringenglish.com2025年09月30日 00:00

I started reading software blogs before I got my first programming job 20 years ago. At this point, I’ve read thousands of blog posts and essays about software, but only a small handful stuck in my mind and changed the way I think.

  1. “The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code” by Joel Spolsky (2000)
  2. “Parse, don’t validate” by Alexis King (2019)
  3. “No Silver Bullet - Essence and Accident in Software Engineering” by Fred Brooks (1986)
  4. “Choices” by Joel Spolsky (2000)
  5. “Application compatibility layers are there for the customer, not for the program” by Raymond Chen (2010)
  6. “Don’t Put Logic in Tests” by Erik Kuefler (2014)
  7. “A little bit of plain Javascript can do a lot” by Julia Evans (2020)
  8. “Choose Boring Technology” by Dan McKinley (2015)
  9. “I’ve locked myself out of my digital life” by Terence Eden (2022)
  10. Bonus: Brad Fitzpatrick on parsing user input (2009)

“The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code” by Joel Spolsky (2000)

Joel Spolsky is the greatest software blogger of all time. His essays have informed so much of my approach to software that it was hard to pick out just one, but “The Joel Test” is my favorite.