Avram Joel Spolsky (born 1965) is a software engineer and writer. He is the author of ''Joel on Software'', a blog on software development, and the creator of the project management software

Trello Trello is a web-based, kanban-style, list-making application and is developed by Trello Enterprise, a subsidiary of Atlassian. Created in 2011 by Glitch, it was spun out to form the basis of a separate company in New York City in 2014 and sold ...

. He was a Program Manager on the

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro (comp ...

team between 1991 and 1994. He later founded

Fog Creek Software Glitch (previously known as Fog Creek Software) is a software company specializing in project management tools. Its products include project management and content management, and code review tools. History Based in New York City, Fog Creek ...

in 2000 and launched the ''Joel on Software'' blog. In 2008, he launched the

Stack Overflow In software, a stack overflow occurs if the call stack pointer exceeds the stack bound. The call stack may consist of a limited amount of address space, often determined at the start of the program. The size of the call stack depends on many fact ...

programmer Q&A site in collaboration with

Jeff Atwood Jeff Atwood (1970) is an American software developer, author, blogger, and entrepreneur. He co-founded the computer programming question-and-answer website Stack Overflow and co-founded Stack Exchange, which extends Stack Overflow's question-an ...

. Using the Stack Exchange software product which powers Stack Overflow, the Stack Exchange Network now hosts over 170 Q&A sites.

Biography

Spolsky was born to

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

parents and grew up in

Albuquerque Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in ...

, New Mexico, and lived there until he was 15. He then moved with his family to

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

, where he attended high school and completed his military service in the

Paratroopers Brigade The 35th Brigade ( he, חֲטִיבַת הַצַּנְחָנִים, ''Hativat HaTzanhanim''), also known as the Paratroopers Brigade, is an infantry brigade unit of paratroopers within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and forms a major part of ...

. He was one of the founders of the

kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming ha ...

Hanaton in

Lower Galilee The Lower Galilee (; ar, الجليل الأسفل, translit=Al Jalil Al Asfal) is a region within the Northern District of Israel. The Lower Galilee is bordered by the Jezreel Valley to the south; the Upper Galilee to the north, from which it is ...

. In 1987, he returned to the United States to attend college. He studied at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

for a year before transferring to

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the worl ...

, where he was a member of

Pierson College Pierson College is a residential college at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Opened in 1933, it is named for Abraham Pierson, a founder and the first rector of the Collegiate School, the college later known as Yale. With just under 50 ...

and graduated in 1991 with a BS ''

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

'' in computer science. Spolsky started working at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washingt ...

in 1991 as a program manager on the

team, where he designed Excel Basic and drove Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications strategy. He moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

in 1995 where he worked for Viacom and

Juno Online Services Juno Online Services, also called simply Juno, is an Internet service provider based in the United States. It originated as a free email service and later expanded its offerings. Juno is a subsidiary of United Online, which in turn is a subsidia ...

. In 2000, he founded Fog Creek Software and created the ''Joel on Software'' blog. ''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. In 2008, Spolsky co-founded

, a question and answer community website for software developers, with

. He served as CEO of the company until Prashanth Chandrasekar succeeded him in the role on October 1, 2019. Spolsky remains the company's Chairman. In 2011, Spolsky launched

, an online project management tool inspired by

Kanban Kanban ( Japanese: カンバン and Chinese: 看板, meaning signboard or billboard) is a scheduling system for lean manufacturing (also called just-in-time manufacturing, abbreviated JIT). Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota, devel ...

methodology. In 2016, Spolsky announced the appointment of

Anil Dash Anil Dash (; born September 5, 1975) is an American technology executive, entrepreneur, Prince scholar and writer. He is the Head of Glitch and VP of Developer Experience at Fastly. Career In 1999, Dash launched his personal weblog, dashes.com ...

as Fog Creek Software's new CEO, with Spolsky continuing as Stack Overflow's CEO and as a Fog Creek Software board member. The company has since been renamed

Glitch A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among ...

. 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". Spolsky coined the term ''fix it twice'' for a process improvement method. It implies a quick, immediate solution for fixing an incident and a second, slower fix for preventing the same problem from occurring again by targeting the root cause. His use of the term ''Shlemiel the painter's

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

'', referring to an algorithm that is not scalable due to performing too many redundant actions, was described by ''salon.coms Scott Rosenberg as an example of good writing "about their insular world in a way that wins the respect of their colleagues and the attention of outsiders.". Spolsky made an appearance at the WeAreDevelopers Conference 2017, stating how developers are writing the script for the future. In his speech, Spolsky talks about how software is eating the world, how it is becoming more evident in everyday life as people interact with more software on a day-to-day basis, and how developers are helping to shape how the world will work as technology keeps evolving. He uses the metaphor "we are just little vegetables floating in software soup", referring to our constant use of software for the most mundane activities, including work, social networking, and even taking a cab. In December 2019, Spolsky revealed he was the chairman of an open-source simulation startup called HASH.

Personal life

In 2015, Spolsky announced his marriage to his husband, Jared, on social media and his blog. He lives on the

Upper West Side The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper We ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of counties in New York, origin ...

Publications

* * * * *

References

External links

Joel on Software

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spolsky, Joel 1965 births American emigrants to Israel Israeli bloggers American bloggers Living people People from Albuquerque, New Mexico American computer programmers American software engineers American technology writers American computer businesspeople Israeli businesspeople Microsoft employees University of Pennsylvania alumni Yale University alumni Jewish American writers Jewish bloggers LGBT businesspeople from the United States LGBT people from New Mexico LGBT Jews 21st-century American non-fiction writers Businesspeople in software 21st-century American Jews

Biography

Personal life

Publications

See also

References

External links