His posts used to drive me crazy in a love-to-hate way, but I read them regularly because he's a good writer. I just disagreed with him about everything.
One day I clicked on a link that took me to one of PG's Lisp essays. Who was this guy? I'd never read anything like it.
That's how I found out about PG, it's what nudged me to finally learn Lisp, it's what led me to follow YC before it was YC (and HN before it was HN), and thus it's why I'm here. Thanks Joel!
I believe that Joel's ideas like using source control, making a build in one step, having a bug database, having the best tools that money can buy, and writing a spec resonated with me in great part because I worked on ERP-style projects that were often built to support large and complex business processes that were well defined.
