When I first read the title, I expected something about Joel Spolsky and was gearing myself up for a giant sigh. The actual piece was quite interesting (not that a piece about a box of Joel wouldn't be, I suppose), and contrasting that with my expectations made me realize just how well-branded certain names become within their particular niches.

Consider, for instance, that for different groups, "PG" most likely means a company (Procter & Gamble), a movie rating, or some other industry-specific thing.

Obviously this isn't a particularly novel realization; perhaps it's even an "outsight" [1]. But it did strike me as interesting just how primed I was to expect a particular association for the relatively common name "Joel" - and reminded me once more of the importance of stepping out of the proverbial cocoon once in a while.

[1] http://www.juliansanchez.com/2007/08/15/outsight/

I have to admit to thinking the same given the context. Pretty much every "social site" tends towards an echo-chamber, even when it's ostensibly healthy.

"Over time specifications have drifted towards being written in a stiff and officious manner, laden with a sense of, but no actual, rigour; as if they were the Doings of Serious Men. In the old days RFCs were written more along the lines of "A letter to the implementer", with directions on how to implement the protocol. Heck, some of them even went so far as to include code. Actual code!"

Great quote. I love the phrase "Doings of Serious Men." I might have to adopt it.

HTML5 gets abuse from all sorts of unlikely corners, for all sorts of reasons, but the actual spec writing (and the necessary reverse engineering of existing Microsoft implementations) seems to be excellent.