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Spolsky has been pumping out great, engaging content in his blog for years; I remember spending countless hours with my friends arguing over it. Then he wrote a
by DenisM 14y ago
Spolsky has been pumping out great, engaging content in his blog for years; I remember spending countless hours with my friends arguing over it. Then he wrote a couple of mediocre posts and stopped blogging altogether. Had it ended there, it would have been merely an astounding feat of self-awareness.
But it didn't end there. Joel had then converted his entire audience to seed Stack Overflow - the one invention that had the biggest impact on the programmer productivity in the 21st century. That's one hell of way to jump the shark, a gold-medal level performance. We would be lucky beyond measure if that sort of "disaster" happened to us every four years, or even each decade. But we're not so lucky.
Hats off to Joel Spolsky.
- lubos 14y agoI hope you are aware Stackoverflow was actually created by Jeff Atwood. Joel just gave the initial idea something along the line like "let's make something like ExpertsExchange but less evil" Not to mention, Stackoverflow was seeded initially by Atwood's audience (since he was the developer of the project to start with). I know because I was one of the first users back in private beta.
- DenisM 14y agoOk. I still think its one of he best ways to jump the blogging shark - donate your audience to where it matters the most.
- lubos 14y agoJoel didn't donate anything. Donations are given without return consideration which is hardly the case here since Stackoverflow was his business.
- jessaustin 14y agoSo does Spolsky get credit for SO or not? You can't have it both ways.
- furtivefelon 14y agoHere is Joel's article when SO launched: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html I believe he also primed the pumps a couple of monthes in advance with Codinghorror, I was reading both at that time.
- gecko 14y agoYou're a bit misinformed. Both Joel on Software and Coding Horror readers formed the initial audience. While Jeff wrote code for StackOverflow, and Joel did not, Joel provided and acquired the initial funding to pay for Jeff's work, and hired the other talent required to allow the site to launch. It was neither entirely Jeff nor entirely Joel's creation, and I doubt it would've been able to launch without both putting quite a bit of backbone into it.