--- title: "Joel’s Best Software Essays of 2004" date: 2004-10-28 author: "Richard MacManus" categories: - name: "ReadWriteWeb" url: "/category/readwriteweb.md" tags: - name: "2004" url: "/tag/2004.md" --- # Joel’s Best Software Essays of 2004 **UPDATE 6/11/04:** I decided to nominate [The Fractal Blogosphere](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001790.php) and [Evolution of Corporate Web Sites](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_evolution_of_corporate_web_sites/) for the Best Software Essays of 2004 book that Joel Spolsky is editing. If you enjoyed either one of those articles, please leave a comment on Joel’s discussion board to support my nominations. [Click here](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?best04.8.24112.0) to second my Fractal nomination, or [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?best04.8.24114.0) to second my Evolution one. Thanks 🙂 \[end of update\] [Joel Spolsky](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.joelonsoftware.com/) is editing a new book of the [best software essays of 2004](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?best04). He’s looking for nominations and I commend him for opening it up for anyone to nominate. Of course, I’d love to have some writing of mine published in a book – so I’d like to nominate at least 1 thing I’ve written this year. R/WW readers will know that I tend to write long, thoughtful posts – that can easily be defined as “essays”. Incidentally the flip side is that, as [Lilia](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/10/14.html#a1385)[ pointed out](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://radiocomments.userland.com/comments?u=109961&p=1385&link=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.mathemagenic.com%2F2004%2F10%2F14.html%23a1385#a132766), my posts can be a trade-off between depth and accessibility. So essays are arguably not the optimal format for weblog posts. But as Popeye would say, I yam what I yam and I can’t help writing long posts :-). Here are 10 of my favourite posts [from 2004](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives.php) that could be considered software essays. I’d very much appreciate it if you would let me know in the comments which one(s) you think I should nominate for Joel Spolsky’s book. [Individualizing the Web](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001780.php)[The Fractal Blogosphere](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001790.php)[Interview with Marc Canter](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001818.php)[The Evolution of Corporate Web Sites](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_evolution_of_corporate_web_sites/)[Weblogs as Avatars](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001902.php)[A Theory of Synchronicity for the Web](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001937.php)[Mama don’t let your baby grow up to be a Generalist](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001978.php)[A New Kind of Literacy](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002083.php)[Electracy Comes From Other Planets](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002110.php) \[worth considering for the title alone\][Digital Lifestyle Mobile Jigsaw](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002204.php) P.S. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out my [interview with Lucas Gonze](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002378.php) that I published yesterday. It’s as long as an essay, but I learned a lot about P2P and decentralization from this collaboration with [Lucas](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://gonze.com/weblog/). P.P.S. Wait till you see my next interview, you’re going to love it! I did the phone interview this morning and I’ll write it up over the next few days. **Update:** Cool, the Lucas interview has just been [Slashdotted!](https://web.archive.org/web/20050213044819/http://slashdot.org/articles/04/10/27/2157206.shtml?tid=126&tid=95) *Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002382.php))*