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I'm back from a nice vacation in England and Norway (motto: "And you thought the English liked mayonnaise"). Over the next few days I'll be busier than a pair of jumper cables at an Alabama picnic catching up.

At the Oslo dinner Petter Hesselberg gave me a copy of his brilliant book Programming Industrial Strength Windows. I believe it's out of print, but if you're developing Windows software for a commercial/shrinkwrap type market, it should be required reading, so do track down a used copy. This is one of the only books that really talks about all the nitty gritty things you want to get right if you are releasing a Windows application for a large market: the kinds of things that, individually, only affect a small percentage of people but taken together spell the difference between super solid Lexus quality production code that delights its users, and Yugo clunkitude.

Students: Fog Creek Software has awesome summer internships in New York City. You get free housing, free lunches, lots of free New York activities, and a chance to write great code with great developers. And a competitive salary. Apply today: we only have four open positions and usually get hundreds of applications, which will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis.

About the Author: I'm your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. For my day job, I run Fog Creek Software, makers of FogBugz - the smart bug tracking software with the stupid name, and Fog Creek Copilot - the easiest way to provide remote tech support over the Internet, with nothing to install or configure.

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