A list of tidbits of writing and thinking that I like.

Paul Graham - writing is thinking

(of Y Combinator fame)

Paul Graham has a number of essays on writing. The essence of those being that writing is thinking, and good writing is good thinking. The best ones are:

• Putting ideas into words
• The need to read – don’t be fooled by the title! This one is actually about writing.

Paul has some later posts that talk about this thinking-writing relationship explicitly. But it was always there as theme weaving through his writing.

Then all the things that are startup tropes at this point – but real insights when they were published “schleps”, Do things that don’t scale. They shaped startup culture, and still do to this day.

Joel Spolsky

(of StackOverflow and Trello fame)

Joel Spolsky’s blog is just a gold mine, but here are some bangers:

• My first BillG review
• Back to Basics (this is the one with Shlemiel the Painter)
• “Smart and gets things done”. This is actually the title of Joel Spolsky’s book. But for I want you don’t actually need to read the book. The point is the title. Eschew architecture astronauts (they’re smart but don’t get things done, or gets things done in an overly complicated way)
• Listen to the first 200 episodes of the Stack Overflow podcast. So much gold in there.

“Use the Source, Luke!” - Jeff Atwood

(of StackOverflow and Discourse fame)

Jeff Atwood is a great thinker on the craft of programming, but I actually think he comes across better in the first ~100 episodes of the Stackoverflow podcast than in his blog. Although there are nuggets in there as well. My favorite is:

• Learn to Read the Source, Luke
  I like to call this one “Use the Source, Luke!”. Anyhow, Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror is great as always.

Raymond Chen

• Why is January 1 being reported as the last week of the previous year?
  From Raymond Chen’s “The Old New Thing”

One hit wonders

• Ludicity - “Tossed Salads And Scrumbled Eggs” Hate mail for SCRUM, Jira, Daily-standups and the clusterfest that is corporate agile.