Joel on Software

2002/01/08

New on the Fog Creek web site: CityDesk for Geeks.

Dave Thomas 1932-2002

Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's, passed away today. Appearing in hundreds of commercials, he gave his hamburger chain a friendly, down-home feel. "Mr. Thomas came to stand for the products he peddled because he was perceived as standing behind them, as if a curious customer could peek inside the kitchen at a Wendy's restaurant and perhaps find Mr. Thomas keeping a watchful eye on the cook at the grill," wrote Stuart Elliot in the New York Times. He taught us that nobody, given the choice, prefers to buy from a faceless megacorporation.

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.