The best blog posts of 2006

The following is a list of posts that struck a chord with me, either through my head or my heart. Recalling them was very easy because their content is always fresh in my mind. There are two types of posts, technical ones that educated me and were well written, and emotional ones that tended to be something I think about when I am away from the computer. If you think I've missed anything seminal from 2006, please leave it in the comments.

In no particular order...

For the head

• There is Good Agile and Bad Agile
  In this post, Steve Yegge rips through Agile development/eXtreme Programming and leaves very very little behind. Here is a sample...

  ...People pretty quickly demonstrated that XP was a load of crap. Take Pair Programming, for instance. It's one of the more spectacular failures of XP. None of the Agileytes likes to talk about it much, but let's face it: nobody does it. The rationale was something like: "well if ONE programmer sitting at a terminal is good, then TEN must be better, because MORE is ALWAYS better! But most terminals can only comfortably fit TWO programmers, so we'll call it PAIR programming!"

  Read on

• Can your programming language do this?
  This post was particularily useful to me, as it felt like Joel was answering the question I asked him when I wrote "What are the Perils of Java Schools". Joel explains exactly why exclusively teaching limited languages such as Java will restrict the potential ability of the students.

• The Power of the Marginal
  Paul Graham writes a highly motivational essay about the importance of creativity, and how being an outsider to a group carries many advantages with it.

• Fear, Shark Attacks and "Will It Scale?"
  Worry about what's important! This year Joel Spolsky made a comment implying that Ruby on Rails mightn't scale. The creator of the framework DHH, wrote an absolutely terrible retort, weeks later, his colleague Matt Linderman wrote this article, which explained quite simply that scalability isn't what stops people making their millions. Usually its really poor products, not solving a problem, a terrible UI, any of those "boring problems". I'm not doing this post justice, read it yourself.

• Death by Risk Aversion
  Kathy Sierra explains that it's better to have an army of haters, than to have a group of people who couldn't care less. All publicity is good publicity, even for software. I've read soo many posts that begin "I just had to install this to see how bad it was". Also, if you have an army of haters, an army of followers will usually follow soon enough. Look at how passionate Apple fans get when their products get criticised.

• The Development Abstraction Layer
  Joel Spolsky again. Before I read this post, I always presumed a subversion check-in was simply a command you ran. In this post Joel explains why he knows all about the weight of cooling fans, the ins and outs of building architectures, how to deal with lawyers who represent the building contractors and most importantly why his programmers don't.

For the heart

• Don't be Afraid
  Ze Frank, possibly the best discovery of 2006, explains that without terror there can be no terrorism. When you're getting on an aeroplane, all the worrying in the world won't defuse the bomb thats onboard, luckily the chances of that bomb actually existing are similar to your chances of winning the national lottery, twice, in the same week.

• Hindsights
  This was the first post I read on Guy Kawasakis blog, unfortunately it's been straight downhill from here on. In true Kawasaki style, this post is his top 10 pieces of advice to young people. Just read it, it's really good.

• I almost destroyed someones life today
  If you plan to work your way up through the ranks of a company, you may find yourself in a similar position to this anonymous CraigsList poster. Read this story, it'll help make sure you don't go ruining lives.

• Where the Hell is Matt?
  Matt Harding toured the world, from London to Laos, and did a silly dance in every place he visited. What follows is the video of every place he visited with an awesome soundtrack to accompany it. If this video does not make you want to drop everything and go see the world, then there is something wrong with you.

That's it and that's all. If you've read or written something in 2006 that should be in the list, post a comment and let me know. At the very least I'll read it. Until then, enjoy your holidays.