Links and Commentary - Essay Blogging and Book Publishing

You may have already seen this since half the software development blogosphere has already linked to it, but Joel Spolsky recently posted an absolutely brilliant essay to his Joel on Software blog called My First BillG Review. I describe this post as being "brilliant" primarily because of the quality of the writing. Joel once again demonstrates his gift for the essay form, and he's getting even better at it. Thank [insert diety here] that blogging has resurrected the art of essay writing. In the technical blogosphere, Joel is one of the best at it. This post should demonstrate that to anyone who has doubts.

As for the content of the essay, it's well worth your while also: a great story, some insight into leadership in technology origanizations, and some thoughts on the recent past and future of Microsoft.

My next link is a bit more self-serving, but I want to acknowledge Pat Eyler (a.k.a. pate), author of the On-Ruby blog for his recent posts about the technology publishing landscape, and more specifically for a couple posts about developer.* Books--so far this one and this one, with more to come I understand. Pate and I have been exchanging emails for a few weeks, discussing software book publishing-related topics, and I can vouch that he has some really interesting posts in the works. If you like to geek out on software books and other industry-related topics, keep an eye out on Pate's blog, and in the meantime check out these recent posts (and the outbound links):

"Books, Publishers, & the Community"

"The Big-Box Publisher"

"The Technical Publishing Market — a whole 'nother look at things"

"Wresponding to Wrox"

"Walmart and the Publisher"

Thanks for reading,
Dan