If you prefer reading paper to reading a computer screen, you might like The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky. It contains a number of articles by various authors on various aspects of software development. Much of the content is available online – in fact, I’d already read a handful of the articles – but printed books are still a lot easier on the eyes and the brain than reading out of a Web browser.

Here are some of the main points that I want to remember:

• Coding style should be enforced by the compiler.
• Software should be flexible, simple, sloppy, tolerant, and forgiving.
• Strong testing can replace strong typing.
• Great programmers want interesting projects more than anything else.
• You can’t directly measure the performance of programmers or testers.
• Emphasizing rewards for individual merit is dangerous for team morale.
• Writing good social software is really hard.
• Small software companies should “trust the customer.”
• Hiring good people is hard (but still easier than firing).
• Ruby looks even stranger than Perl.

I can’t promise that it’s the “best” software writing, but it’s pretty good, so I recommend this book to anyone in the software industry looking for some interesting ideas.