ditda

I agree, it is very obvious that Joel would promote his own software. That's not really what I intended my post to be about though.

Joel has long said he only hires great programmers that know CS theory in and out. I don't think that's changed, he's just also identified that recent graduates are lacking in time-management and collaboration skills needed to be good industrial programmers. However, he isn't just having a debate about academic vs vocational education but offering paid internships, and now sponsoring one of these Capstone groups, in an effort to give students the skills he thinks they are missing.

I just don't get where all the Joel-bashing comes from. You'd never know it from reading this rant or any of the comments but Joel is giving his software to these students for free:

"FogBugz would work great for tracking this: if you’re doing a capstone project and need access to FogBugz, please let us know and we’ll be happy to set you up for free."

More importantly Joel is paying for students to participate in the program, and providing one of his programmers as a mentor. He's also had well-known, paid internship programs at Fogcreek. To me that says he's taken the initiative to fill this void in academia himself, with his own money no less.