Some Books about Spolsky - Happy Spolsky Reading!

Spolsky is knowledgeable, funny and free of unnecessary religious fervor. Joel on Software is a must-read ...having (Joel on Software) in one place, edited, with an index, is probably the best twenty-five dollars you'll spend this year.

— Greg Wilson, Dr. (Joel Spolsky's) genuine desire to make the software world a better place keeps us coming back for more.

— Bruce Hadley, softwareCEO. This book will challenge, encourage, upset, and entertain you. Spolsky knows his stuff, and he's got the war wounds to prove it. This book is worth the price of admission...

— Tom Duff, Duffbert's Random Musings

A guide to attracting, recruiting, interviewing, and hiring the best technical talent.

• A comprehensive system for hiring top-notch technical employees
• Packed with useful information and specific advice written in a breezy, humorous style
• Learn how to find great people--and get them to work for you--in an afternoon!

The top software developers are ten times as productive as average developers. Ten times. You can't afford not to hire them. But if you haven't been reading Joel Spolsky's books or blog, you probably don't know how to find them and make them want to work for you.

In this brief book, Joel reveals all his secrets--from his years at Microsoft, and as the co-founder of Fog Creek Software--for recruiting the best developers in the world. You'll learn:

• How to create a pipeline of excellent developers using internships--and why this is not optional
• How to build a workplace where the best programmers want to work
• The secrets to reading resumes, interviewing technical people, and deciding when to make an offer

If you've ever wondered what you should be looking for in a resume, if you've ever struggled to decide whether to hire someone at the end of an interview, or if you're wondering why you can't find great programmers, stop everything and read this book.

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Price: $4.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

It's nice having a collection of high-quality writing related to software and the business in one place instead of trawling the Web for it.

— Meryl K. Evans, meryl. ...an entertaining read with a number of enlightening insights into what I do for a living... The whole book is fantastic though, and you should absolutely pick it up...in dead tree form. This is a book worth checking out, even if you're not a software developer.

With a nod to both the serious and funny sides of technical writing, The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky is an entertaining read and a guide to the technical writing literati.

The Best Software Writing I contains writings from:

• Ken Arnold
• Leon Bambrick
• Michael Bean
• Rory Blyth
• Adam Bosworth
• danah boyd
• Raymond Chen
• Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi
• Cory Doctorow
• ea_spouse
• Bruce Eckel
• Paul Ford
• Paul Graham
• John Gruber
• Gregor Hohpe
• Ron Jeffries
• Eric Johnson
• Eric Lippert
• Michael Lopp
• Larry Osterman
• Mary Poppendieck
• Rick Schaut
• Aaron Swartz
• Clay Shirky
• Eric Sink
• why the lucky stiff

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Price: $3.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Sociolinguistics is the study of the different ways in which different groups of people use language This book provides a brief but comprehensive introduction to the field, making links with related disciplines such as history, politics, and gender studies..
Price: $10.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Bernard Spolsky looks at the many debates at the forefront of language policy in this up-to-date introduction. The topics covered include ideas of correctness and bad language; bilingualism and multilingualism; language death and efforts to preserve endangered languages; language choice as a human and civil right; and language education policy. Spolsky develops a theory of modern national language policy and the major forces controlling it and explores questions that arise concerning the recognition of language policies and language management..
Price: $27.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The essays gathered here demonstrate and justify the excitement and promise of cognitive historicism, providing a lively introduction to this new and quickly growing area of literary studies. Written by eight leading critics whose work has done much to establish the new field, they display the results of a largely unprecedented combination of cultural and cognitive analysis. The authors explore both narrative and dramatic genres, uncovering the tensions among presumably universal cognitive processes, and the local contexts within which complex literary texts are produced. Alan Richardson's opening essay evaluates current approaches to the study of literature and cognition, locating them on the map of recent literary studies, indicating their most compelling developments to date, and suggesting the most promising future directions. The seven essays that follow provide innovative readings of topics ranging from Shakespeare (Othello, Macbeth, Cymbeline, The Rape of Lucrece) through Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, to contemporary authors Ian McEwan and Gilbert Sorrentino. They underscore some of the limitations of new historicist and post-structuralist approaches to literary cultural studies while affirming the value of supplementing rather than supplanting them with insights and methods drawn from cognitive and evolutionary theory. Together, they demonstrate the analytical power of considering these texts in the context of recent studies of cultural universals, 'theory of mind,' cognitive categorization and genre, and neural-materialist theories of language and consciousness. This groundbreaking collection holds appeal for a broad audience, including students and teachers of literary theory, literary history, cultural studies, and literature and science studies..
Price: $106.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The papers in this volume exemplify various degrees of computer participation in several fields of linguistics The book is organized in terms of the two fundamental capabilities of the computer: data-processing problems and systems problems..
Price: $102.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Handbook of Educational Linguistics is a dynamic, scientifically grounded overview revealing the complexity of this growing field while remaining accessible for students, researchers, language educators, curriculum developers, and educational policy makers.

• A single volume overview of educational linguistics, written by leading specialists in its many relevant fields
  
• Takes into account the diverse theoretical foundations, core themes, major findings, and practical applications of educational linguistics
  
• Highlights the multidisciplinary reach of educational linguistics
  
• Each chapter portrays the complexity of its subject matter while remaining accessible to a wide audience.

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Price: $135.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]