Joel Spolsky - Biography

Avram Joel Spolsky (born 1965) is a software engineer and writer. He is the author of Joel on Software, a blog on software development. He was a Program Manager on the Microsoft Excel team between 1991 and 1994. He later founded Fog Creek Software in 2000 and launched the Joel on Software blog. In 2008 he launched the now successful Stack Overflow programmer Q&A site in collaboration with Jeff Atwood. Using the Stack Exchange software product which powers Stack Overflow, The Stack Exchange Network now hosts over 60 Q&A sites.

Biography

Spolsky grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico and lived there until he was 15. He then moved with his family to Jerusalem, Israel, where he attended high school and did his military service as a paratrooper. He was one of the founders of Kibbutz Hanaton in Upper Galilee. In 1987, he returned to the United States to attend college. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania for a year before transferring to Pierson College, Yale University, where he graduated in 1991 with a BS summa cum laude in Computer Science.

Spolsky started working at Microsoft in 1991 as a Program Manager on the Microsoft Excel team, where he designed Excel Basic and drove Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications strategy. He moved to New York City in 1995 where he worked for Viacom and Juno. In 2000, he founded Fog Creek Software and created the Joel on Software weblog. Joel on Software was "one of the first blogs set up by a business owner".

In 2005 Spolsky co-produced and appeared in Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks, a documentary documenting Fog Creek's development of Project Aardvark, a remote assistance tool.

Spolsky also co-founded Stack Overflow with Jeff Atwood, a question and answer community website for software developers.

He is the author of five books, including User Interface Design for Programmers and Smart and Gets Things Done. He is also the creator of The Joel Test.

Publications

• User Interface Design for Programmers, Apress, 2001. ISBN 1-893115-94-1
• Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity, Apress, 2004. ISBN 1-59059-389-8
• The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky, Apress, 2005. ISBN 1-59059-500-9
• Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky's Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent, Apress, 2007. ISBN 1-59059-838-5
• More Joel on Software: Further Thoughts on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity, Apress, 2008. ISBN 1430209879

External links

• Personal website
• Joel on Software
• Fog Creek Software
• Joel on Software discussion board
• Links to essays in 'Best Software Writing I'
• Stack Overflow
• Server Fault