Joel on Software

The Institute for Kiwi Studies

Oh yes. It turns out the Māori translation we were using for the translation of the fictional Institute for Kiwi Studies had a slight grammatical error; thanks to Professor Ray Harlow of the University of Waikato, who wrote the most up-to-date Māori language grammar, it should be "Te Tari Mātauranga o te Tokoeka," and indeed, it is concerned with the study of the South Island kiwi, Apteryx australis.

Kiwis feed on worms, berries, insects, leaves, reptiles, and amphibians. They locate their food by scratching through the dead leaves with their claws or by probing the ground with their bill.

Kiwi!

Have you been wondering about Distributed Version Control? It has been a huge productivity boon for us, so I wrote Hg Init, a Mercurial tutorial—check it out!

Want to know more?

You’re reading Joel on Software, stuffed with years and years of completely raving mad articles about software development, managing software teams, designing user interfaces, running successful software companies, and rubber duckies.

About the author.

I’m Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make Trello, insanely simple project management, FogBugz, an enlightened bug tracker designed to help great teams develop brilliant software, and Kiln, which simplifies source control. I’m also the co-founder and CEO of Stack Exchange. More about me.