Spolsky is a highly experienced programmer — he cut his teeth at Microsoft working on Excel and later formed Fog Creek Software , whose bug-tracker, FogBugz, is used and loved in my group at work. He also writes the popular weblog Joel on Software, which is the original source of the material in this book.

The essays in this collection are very entertaining, and they offer solid advice. There are a lot of little tidbits here I hadn't seen in other places, which was a very pleasant surprise. I, for one, am changing the way that I interview coders, and I expect to enjoy some lively discussion with my group about some of the other topics.

If you want to sample Spolsky's writing, or just want to avoid paying for a dead tree, all of the book's contents are available on his site.