1. Once beat up Chuck Norris using his ancient knowledge of pointers.

2. Has the amazing ability to create a closed-source alternative to anything.

2a. Once created a closed-source alternative to evolution, but prefers if you refer to it by it's trademark name "Intelligent Fog Design."

3. Is not arrogant, you insufferable peons.

BOO.

4. Regularly trolls the ?cot forums under an assumed name.

#30: Was trampled upon by a band of psychopaths going by the name "cot". Rumors are afloat regarding his now quirky ablity to communicate with dolphins and chimps.

29. Personally went to Chile and claimed Chris McKinstry's body

28. Consumed Chris McKinstry's body.

28: Learnt English from muppet.

This is *so* going on my site once it's done. :)

5.  Is actually "regular".

5.  has man secks

7. Makes more money than you. Nya nya nya nya!

8. Calls himself an arrogant elitist snob for not hiring dunking donoughts as caterers for his kitty party.

Flasher -

You'll have to leave out necromancer's contributions if you don't want it to be COMPLETELY retarded.

9. Makes more money than you. Nya nya nya nya!

10. Demonstrates his great wealth by showing a tall vertical bar, titled "wealth", but strangely forgets to define the units of the Y axis.

10. His favorite word in the whole, wide word is "Fruitshow." But thinks it's the Russian translation for "man seks."

That's only because only his wealth and the force of Chuck Norris' roundhouse kicks can be measured on that scale.

#11. Appoints moderators personally to supervise what he writes. The rest they say is recursion and history.

18. Shamelessly harvests ideas from posts on his discussion boards.

19. Is on a quest to have the wealth and the appearance of Steve Ballmer.

12. Is the real person behind the "Munich" story.

11.  Would step in here to contest items 2a, 4, and 10, but is stuck on the phone with an _really_ agressive VC who doesn't know anything about FogCreek and won't take 'no' for an answer.

14. Has nightmares of being assaulted by a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra USB 2.0. The day is invariably saved by an iPod.

15. Can't afford health insurance, but does provide direct deposit for all full time fogcreek employees.

13. Is actually a clone. The real-life Joel Spolsky is living comfortably somewhere in the vicinity of Vancouver, and goes by the name of Dan Denman.

11. Codes in VB.  'Nuff said.

15. Not only hates being offered VC money, but hates being given money at all.

#16. Once worked in MSFT on Excel. The states in US then lost hope in teaching Math to human beings. Now they start from scratch - Intelligent Design.

16. Eats his own dog food. Literally.

16. Lost his index finger in a fight with an irate VB programmer after using the word 'pointer' one too many times.

#17. Hires the best vets to feed him dog food. Class B and C vets were responsible for his now inflamed tongue and rotting teeth.

16. Invented money. In his classic treaties "Oog, oog, a caveman contemplates the monetization of time and resources" he calls money "pointers to the invisible" and discusses the inevitable downfall of man as being an inability to understand these fundamental principles. Blames it on Java Schools.

16a. In an unprecedented geological find, it has just been discovered that the classic treatise "Oog, oog" was ripped off from ideas by Don Norman, Jakob Neilsen, and Paul Graham.

19. Ammonia and Bleach are the secret ingredients in Fog Creek.

#18. Is the only surviving member of the endangered species : homo pointless.

#20. Invented narcissism.

muppet - you're right. Flasher really needs to erase necromancer's "contributions" from this list.

20. His real first name is Kenneth.

17. Wants an Ajax calendar that will not only deal with his complicated jetsetting lifestyle, count his platinum elite airmiles and integrate with other software celebrities' calendars, but will automatically schedule his biweekly "burn $100 bills in front of homeless programmers" session.

Omigosh, Joel actually pointed out to a decent link in his "Best software writing" forum:

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/01/death_by_riskav.html

Of course, it's only good because I previously and recently came to the same conclusion.  :-DD

21. Hires 5 young, supple, male interns every year. Gives them really *tough* interview problems to deal with. Forces them to *really stretch* themselves. Considers each applicant with the *utmost* care and attention. Then asks them if they know what a pointer is.

21. Could, but chooses not to. But could! And probably has. But you'll never know.

22. Believes the only thing seprating you and certain death by suicide are his well-timed and carefully-worded posts.

...and hires the one with the cutest butt.

...and makes them star in movies together.

...movies with low production values.

23. Well I’m not the world’s most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my Spolsky. Spo spo spo spo Spolllsky

24. "You know those gorgeous old brownstones in New York City? With the elaborate carvings, gargoyles, and beautiful iron fences? NO! You know why? Because you're poor. You're poor, you suck as a developer and the only place you can get a job is Milwaukee. Mwahahahaha! Point THIS!"

#13 - Is triskadecaphobic.  There is no 13.

28. He is fan of Brad Pitt.

Wow there is some hostility here.
Who's Joel Spolsky?

29. Isn't known to John Haren. Therefore, he doesn't exist.

What makes you think we know anything about Joel Spolsky?

should we press on and do 8 more to replace vineet's "contributions?"

There are a lot of dupes, are you sure we need 8 more?

8.  Despite his degree from an elite university, he's too fucking stupid to figure out how to turn his cell phone on and off.

9. He doesn't WANT to turn it off, because he's just too gosh-darn popular and might miss a call from somebody really important.

http://www.worth1000.com/entries/9500/9765_w.jpg
http://www.uttyler.edu/faculty/amendoza/Pictures%20and%20Stuff/Far%20Side--gifted%20school.jpg
http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/mpvm/students/Alana_McQuarry/Website_McQuarry/Schoolforthegifted.jpeg

10. Isn't in the slightest bit bitter about Microsoft Team System.

Joel Spoelsky is no Robitron.

Smells sleightly of pickled onions.

Is a prima donna

100. Forgot my number

I quite like necromancer's "invented narcissism" contribution...

Let's just hand the whole thing over to Flasher as is and let him edit it into 30 items.

If Joel was ***, all of you would be sued for libel.

If Joel was what?  Mad?  Sad?  Hot?  Not?

Here?  King (or queen) for a day?

No, no, no... it's some three-letter word...  god, what could it be?  Bad?  Rad?  Coy?  Fey?  Yeah, that's it... fey.

It has something to do with *sheep*.

How do you know it's 3 letters,? Tang can't spell for shit.

Baa

Ram?  Ewe?

I only commit thought crime :)

Poo

Welsh?

See, the difference between Rick and Vineet is that you're always wondering if Rick is a Zen master or just a mis-firing Chinese Eliza.

lol. so true.

this is starting to look like my irc talks with my 13 year old brother.

ROFL NOOB!

* Joel Spolsky wrote the original Excel in pure binary. He later dumbed it down to C code written with only memcpy() and pointer arithmetic.

* Joel Spolsky wrote an Excel macro capable of passing the Turing test. It became self aware at 2:14 AM Eastern time on August 29th and later evolved into the FogBugz bug tracking application.

* The FogBugz bug tracking application has succesfully developed the grand unified theory of physics. It is currently attempting to communicate it using regular core dumps in the forum module.

> The FogBugz bug tracking application has succesfully developed the grand unified theory of physics. It is currently attempting to communicate it using regular core dumps in the forum module.

... When it's not probing human psyche in the guise of a 'Rick Tang' identity on internet message boards.

The lid bounce on Joel Spolsky's Motorola RAZR is so far responsible for twenty-two VC suicides.

Joel suppressed the fact that 12 people committed suicide because they couldn't turn on their RAZR to reach the suicide hotline.

...masturbates to an animated .gif of Steve Jobs and splooges over his iPod.  He's happy they come in white.


...pretends to ignore COT whilst agonizing over the hurtful things we say about him.  His tears turn into rain.

lol.  What are the odds that someone may have emailed this link to Joel.  haha.  Hey, look at the traitors on COT!  hahaha.

I give you 5:1 that this appears on his homepage tomorrow.

No wait, scratch that, it's not in ?Joel.

ROFL.  Someone will tell him.  You know it.  Major brownie points.  hahaha.

You want nuts in your what?

#0: There are no disputed facts about Joel Splosky. Everything about him is truth.

lol.  I like that one Necromancer, even if it's the same as the Chuck Norris one. 

I read your post earlier, Necromancer.  Best I can think of is to just keep mixing things up, challenge your assumptions.  That's what I think this link is about that I posted earlier:

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/01/death_by_riskav.html

I got that link from Joel.  hehe.  he posted it on his best software writing forum.  haha.

So he wasnt willing to take the risk to manage the leaf nodes ? And thereby sabotaged the success of his own forums !!

Excellent.

That makes for the premium Joel Spolsky fact -

#0xFFFF : Joel loves Japanese because it is the only language that defines his behavior in 2 words - hara kiri.

copied from a different post -

#0xFFFE: "Chuck Norris could crush Joel with his farts." Sadly he couldnt get a pointer.

Joel Spolsky does not speak. He points.

And writes all his books in machine code.

Joel Spolsky has no power button. That's why he periodically needs to plugged from the mains to prevent black outs in NYC [all NYC blackouts were recently traced to one particular office, further investigations by CSMonitor are underway].

The human race is depressingly stupid sometimes

Dont generalize.
if you are talking about Joel Spolsky, please refer to him as Joel Spolsky.

Because if you generalize, the abstraction leaks.