The Joel Wars

The guy drops something, and hundreds of people become all agitated, bloggers and developers and forum hang-outs get in a flap, buzzing with excitement. What a rage. Goodness. 

James writes:

I've come across a number of posts listing ways to increase traffic to a blog recently but none have described anything like this.

Partly that's probably because Joel Spolsky might not read (or need) any such guides...  ;)

"Increase traffic to yet unknown blog" is a completely different (and for guide writers likely more lucrative) problem domain than "regularly get some new peak of buzz to an already highly visible, highly frequented A-list personal website that's been around for years and built a solid fanbase". It must be a different one: part of the rage is that Joel Spolsky wrote it---otherwise, nobody would have noticed it, nobody would have cared, from the writing alone. That's not to devalue the article or the author (though some crabbers will probably see it that way), only something worth being pointed out.

It probably applies to half of his writing; the articles that made him so popular were of an entirely different kind. Neither should this pressurize him into keeping the quality at this level at all times (we all love to freedom to rant away in our blogs; plus we never know beforehand whether and how our efforts will be received; plus it is often the right mix of well-balanced articles and outright rants that is popular with many readers) nor should anyone be tricked into believing that a similar article could create a similar buzz.

So why the fuss about the alleged irony?

Nobody asked him what technology he would recommend for writing a FogBugz-like bug tracker. So when he talks about the technology used for that project, that in no way invalidates the "contrary" recommendation he gave beforehand regarding a completely different kind of undertaking.

Seriously, it must be stressful being him. Give him a break.  ;)