I completely agree with the points in both the first and second letters. I have enormous respect for Joel -- he is my role model for being a hugely successful,

I completely agree with the points in both the first and second letters. I have enormous respect for Joel -- he is my role model for being a hugely successful, happily coupled, and incidentally gay software developer -- and his writing about how to hire people and software design in general has really shaped how I think about these things. At the same time, his output recently has been of much lower quality and he's perhaps a little over-awed with his own achievements (quotes such as "I think it's only a matter of time before most serious programmers consider Stack Overflow to be an important tool in their work" spring to mind). Joel, you're great, just take yourself a little less seriously.