Software Development

Published 28 September 04 by Justin French

I come from a background of design rather than programming or computer science. I learnt the design business inside out through my time at university and in the early years of my business.

But I never learnt anything about the software business, and these days I’m spending at least half my time as a web application developer, and the reality is sinking in… Web Development is Software Development.

Most of the ideas and concepts put forward by Joel are geared towards software teams building native desktop applications rather than web applications, but so much of what he writes is still 100% applicable. His archives are an absolute gold mine of clear thinking and writing which I’ve been digging through recently.

Here’s some classics:

• Painless Bug Tracking
• Painless Software Schedules
• Painless Functional Specifications
• Things You Should Never Do, Part 1
• User Interface Design for Programmers
• The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets

I could go on and on and on.

Drew McLennan took Joel’s Software Test and turned it into a series of entries applying the test to web development, and it’s made me think a lot more about my processes.

For what it’s worth, I currently have a “Joel Test” score of 5/11 (one question is irrelevant to me, since I’m not hiring), but I’m making it my mission to achieve 10/11 or 11/11 within the next 6 months.

Thanks to Joel, Drew and others, I can see the benefits – there will be no losers, only winners.