Farewell, Joel Spolsky

Joel Spolsky announced that he will quit blogging and basically turns off the whole internet celebrity thing. That includes Joel on Software, the Stack Overflow podcast, his Inc. articles and his Twitter. He’s mentioned this in the recent podcast episodes and wrote a good-bye piece on Inc.

It was very unexpected and it left me very sad. Joel probably doesn’t realize how important his writing and everything he did was to me. And to others, too. He’s had tremendous impact on my life.

February 2008 I was in a QA department, writing test designs for people who (supposedly) could not think by themselves, didn’t understand English very well and did not really know how to test software. My job was to look at the product we were testing and write:

1. Open the program.
2. From menu select File.
3. Verify all menu items are localized.
4. Click Export.
5. Verify Export dialog is displayed and localized.
6. Click Cancel.
7. From menu select File > Import.
8. Verify Import dialog is displayed and localized.
9. From menu select Edit.
10. Verify all items are localized.
11. ad nauseam

I felt really sorry for the testers.

Especially because they were quite smart, understood English and (unlike me) could actually do a pretty decent job at testing. But, you gotta do what you gotta do.

As for a lot of those testers, this job was something I took on during my studies to make some money and get some experience. Which I did. But it felt too much like a job and too little like something that would be worthwile. And all I really wanted was to learn new things and write cool programs with awesome people.

During that time the school wasn’t really fascinating either. I’ve finally realized that it was not about programming at all and while we were learning some useful things, it was very slow, went into wrong directions and did not quite fit my way of doing things.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I felt very low back then. I just accepted this world of hopeless boredom and lived day by day doing the same things. I practically stopped reading and learning altogether.

Go to work. Go home. Watch some TV series. Go to bed. Rinse. Repeat.

Then a friend sent me a link. It was this short online book called User Interface Design For Programmers. I knew very little about UI at that time so I looked at it and started to read.

And it was amazing. It was funny, well written, made perfect sense, contained a lot of important informationd and on top of that, it was funny. Have you ever read a technical book and where you could not stop laughing? My point exactly.

This little book had three effects: it opened my eyes with regards to UI design; made me wonder what else could this Joel Spolsky guy have written; and most importantly, it ligted up that little spark of curiousness again. I was thirsty for knowledge. And eager to write some program just to put the ideas in the book to practice.

I’ve looked at the Joel on Software site and I’ve read every article that was there. It was just that good. And I wanted more.

In his writings Joel mentioned some other sites: Jeff Attword’s Coding Horror, 37 Signals’ Signal vs. Noise and Stevey Yegge’s blogs. I’ve read and loved those, too.

I realized that I really want to be a programmer in a place where they value programmers. And that I want to work on some great piece of software. And that I want to work with really smart people from whom I can learn. And that I want to became good enough to actually get hired at such a place.

I immersed myself into this new-found world, discovering the Stack Overflow podcast and closely following the site itself (got the Beta badge, baby!). Thanks to Joel’s little mention I’ve found This Week in Tech and all the other Leo Laporte’s podcasts. I started to read Hacker News and I started to program again. At home. For fun.

I’ve learned Python, looked at all the interesting stuff that were emerging, and two years later, I was still working at the same place, doing basically the same job, but I felt like very different person. I had a purpose. And a goal.

And I realized that it was time to move on and try to find work as a real programmer. So I sent my résumé to Red Hat and after several interviews, I got accepted.

This is my first few weeks in. I’m working on an interesting project, I’m learning Ruby and I work with a great team full of smart and funny people. In a company that seems a bit crazy — just the way I like it.

All of this thanks to Joel’s blog and books. He literally changed my world for the better. I wonder how many other people has he influenced without even knowing it. And now he wants to stop doing that and focus on his company.

I think it’s a good decision.

He obviously thought about it a lot (Joel never came across as a guy who doesn’t think things through) and his reasoning makes sense to me. But even if it didn’t, it is Joel’s decision and it does make sense to him.

He feels that he wants to focus more of his effort on Fog Creek. That he needs to get to all the other programmers that he can’t reach by his blog and podcast. And make their lives better, too. And that’s a noble goal.

And yes. I bet he hopes to make a huge amount of money in the process. Which, as far as I’m concerned he: a) deserves; b) tends to put to good use anyway (see Stack Overflow, Bussiness of Software conferences, UCOSP or Hg Init).

This still doesn’t change the fact that it makes me incredibly sad that there won’t be (a lot of) new articles or podcasts. They truly played an important role in my life.

Yet, strangely, it feels good in this weird way: I remember that when I started listening to the Stack Overflow podcasts, I didn’t really know anything Joel and Jeff were talking about. They passed around bunch of names, tools, languages and technologies and none of them were familiar to me.

A few weeks ago, I listened to the podcasts again — starting with the very first episode and going forward. And, to my great and very pleasant surprise, I knew every name that they mentioned. I knew what they were talking about and what that person was responsible for. I understood the context. I knew the technologies and principles and languages and I could really feel how much have I grown for these past two years. Sure, there is a great lot I don’t know — I’d be the last to say otherwise. But I’ve started and I have moved forward.

It feels almost like in one of those stories where a dead person’s ghost stays in the real world to make sure that everything is on the right track, before finally moving on.

So, Joel: Thank you so much. You’ve shown me the way and I’m forever grateful. You can leave freely now. Go and do what you want and need to and be happy.

I have learned and accepted this fundamental truth of our universe:

All good things have an end.

It was good.