From a blog at Joel on Software:

Slashdot reviews my book: "Aimed at programmers who don't know much about user interface design and think it is something to fear, Joel Spolsky provides a great primer, with some entertaining and informative examples of good and bad design implementations, including some of the thought process behind the decisions..."

Look, I like Joel. I quote him all the time. I give out links to his piece on not rewriting code from scratch to everyone I meet. He talks a good game and I imagine his book reads fairly well, but has anyone ever tried using CityDesk? It stinks. The UI sucks. For someone who complains about Mozilla not supporting "alt-space, n" to minimize a window, he's got a lot of gall selling those 0s & 1s.

And look at his new training video. The image editor is atrocious. No good keyboard shortcuts, horribly mouse-dependant, and it just plain looks like something someone made with VB 6 for a high school programming class project.

Why is this? Why is the only programming company owner that talks like he's got sense release a product that undercuts so much of what that same guy espouses on his site? Heck, undercuts what he's writing a book about? Why wasn't that time spent cleaning up his own pot before telling everyone else how to ensure theirs don't turn black?

I could guess, but none of my answers undercut the undercut. Hey, my app stinks right now in the UI front (though it got a lot better with 1.1) -- and the web page is horrendous -- but I haven't even started spending any money on advertising, much less started writing a book on UI design. Unless you count this rant.

Oh well. It's all about who you know and how you say it, not what you do.

(PS: Fwiw, here is a shorter version.)