Important Blog Posts

I've been voraciously reading blogs for about two years now, and in that time, I've come across some pretty amazing stuff.

I decided a couple months ago that I really needed to make a list of my all-time favorite blog posts and essays, and share that list with others.  This list would only include things that have profoundly impacted my personal thinking.

Here is the first subset of that list.

 

1. Joel Spolsky: The Law of Leaky Abstractions

This is my favorite thing that Joel Spolsky has ever written.

This essay took on a whole new significance for me when I started learning Web development with ASP.NET.

Even if you know how to drag and drop in the Visual Studio designer, you still must know how to write HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.  Even if you use an object-relational mapper like SubSonic, NHibernate, or even the NuSoft Framework, you still must know SQL.

As a software developer, you'll need to rely on abstractions created by others.  These abstractions will leak, and it will be your job to plug those leaks.

 

2. Paul Graham: Great Hackers

Paul Graham can certainly seem arrogant and full of himself at times, but this classic essay remains a must-read.  Get inside the mind of a great programmer.

 

3. Joel Spolsky: The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code

Just a note to every company I've interviewed with since college: whether you knew it or not, you took the Joel Test. ;)