The Best Software Writing I .. it's a pity that there was never a volume II for this classic collection of the best software writing, selected and introduced by Joel Spolsky.

I just picked it up to re-read some of my favourites, like

• Bruce Eckel's Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing, which is a bit of a milestone article in the rise of the "scripting" languages like ruby and Python.
  
• Adam Bosworth's ICSOC04 Talk which reminds us it is more important for computer science to be understandable by people than by computers.
  

There's also some great pointed humour, with

• Rory Blyth's Excel as a Database
  
• Powerpoint Remix - Aaron Swartz
  
• And the legendary A Quick (and Hopefully Painless) Ride Through Ruby (with Cartoon Foxes) by why the lucky stiff
  

Definitely one of the all-time-must-have tech reads (and re-reads).