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Good System, Bad System

This item ran on the Joel on Software homepage on Tuesday, July 29, 2008

“I pass six Starbucks every morning on my walk to work. Just to clarify, that's counting only the Starbucks that are actually on the west side of Eighth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. I think there are some branches on the east side, but that side remains terra incognita for me; for most New Yorkers, micro-optimizing the walk to work is a matter of habit, and I have no reason to cross the street. For all I know, the other side of Eighth Avenue consists of nothing but pachinko parlors and flea circuses. Wouldn't surprise me one bit.”

From my latest Inc. article: Good System, Bad System

PS: I've got a new book out: More Joel on Software is the second collection of articles from the archives of this site.

Oh, and by the way: My company, Fog Creek Software, has paid internships in software development for qualified college students. They're in New York City. Free housing, lunch, and more. And you get to work on real, shipping software with the smartest developers in the business.

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.

Enter your email address to receive a (very occasional) email whenever I write a major new article. You can unsubscribe at any time, of course.

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. More about me.

There's a complete archive of everything going back to 2000. The home page is reserved for minor, ephemeral thoughts, but occasionally I write a longer article. You can sign up to receive email whenever this happens at the bottom of this page. We also have one of those RSS thingamajiggies. If you don't know what that is, consider yourself lucky.

This site is actively translated by volunteers around the world into more than thirty languages.

Want to hire great developers? Looking for a job that doesn't suck? Over 200,000 great programmers read my job board at jobs.joelonsoftware.com.

StackOverflow podcast series at ITConversations

Jeff Atwood and I have a weekly podcast on IT Conversations where we chat about software development, especially the new website we're building, stackoverflow.com.

Have feedback? There are several popular discussion boards on this site:

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TechInterview.org
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You can also email me directly, although my mailbox is an official disaster area.

For my day job, I'm the CEO of Fog Creek Software, a bootstrapped software company in New York, NY.

We make FogBugz, a bug tracking system that actually works and can be used to manage everything your development team does, from bug tracking to customer email to feature management to project scheduling and so much more. Free online trial.

We also make Fog Creek Copilot, which lets you control someone else's computer (with their permission, of course) over the Internet. It's the best way to fix someone's computer problems remotely. There's nothing to install, it's simple as heck, and it works through any kind of firewall, NAT, or proxy situation with zero configuration. More

If you're in college, Fog Creek Software has a very cool paid internship program (last year's interns developed Copilot in one summer). We also run a Software Management Training Program, an intensive two year program for college graduates to learn about managing high tech that combines a Masters in Technology Management with extensive hands-on experience in a variety of positions.

Share links to interesting URLs with other readers at the Joel Reddit (about).

Wondering what it's like to develop software at Fog Creek? The documentary Aardvark'd covers the story of the development of Copilot. It's available on DVD.

Read the archives in dead-tree format! There are now four books available at your favorite bookstore: User Interface Design for Programmers, Joel on Software, Smart and Gets Things Done, and More Joel on Software. All are excellent ways to catch up on years of the drivel that appears here without going blind reading it on a computer screen.

Fog Creek co-founder Michael Pryor has his own site on Technical Interview Questions.

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