Founder of Fog Creek Software, which makes an HTML editor/content manager called CityDesk, and, in many people's opinion, exceptionally nice bug tracking software called FogBugz.
* http://www.fogcreek.com

His weblog, JoelOnSoftware, http://www.joelonsoftware.com/, has lots of great articles on software.
* ''I love how the name makes people refer to Joel as "Joel on Software." -- DanielBrockman''
** That fact probably has more to do with "Spolsky" than "On Software".  I bought his book before I ever remembered the name Spolsky long enough to tell it to a friend. -- SteveJorgensen

He likes BigDesignUpFront:
* http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/AardvarkSpec.html,
and HungarianNotation, but no one's perfect.
* ''Specifically, he likes '''good''' Hungarian, as opposed to the nonsense people seem to have perpetuated in its place.''

He does something similar to XP's PlanningGame - it's more-or-less the prioritization part without the scheduling.
* http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/SetYourPriorities.html

----

Reviews:

JS has a clean and vivid writing style - a major acheivement considering the subjects. The drawback is when he's completely wrong he is very hard to counter. --PhlIp

----

His essay on "Five Worlds" -- http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html -- sheds a lot of light on his skepticism about XP. XP methodologies are very effective in corporate-internal development like the storied C3 project, where requirements can change at any time over the course of the project, but they don't exactly add a whole lot when writing shrink-wrap software (his preferred world), and they'd probably be actively obstructive in embedded-software and game development. (There's a reason embedded and games are almost exclusively CeeLanguage and CeePlusPlus.)

----
CategoryPerson