Spolsky will update Joel on Software for the last time March 17.
Great stuff from the Inc. column:
In retrospect, Joel on Software was essentially a small, perfectly targeted magazine for programmers with a certain pragmatic philosophy toward software development. It was also free advertising for my company, but the advertising actually looked a lot more like editorial content than anything else; the most popular post I ever wrote, for example, was about how technology companies should never, ever rewrite their code from scratch.
Once I had built an audience among programmers, enough of them turned into customers that I was able to get my bootstrapped company off the ground.
Make your site an indispensable resource—something people care deeply about—and the community you’ve built will support you.