5 ms·

It sounds more like a dig on their programming experience.

by delano 19y ago

raganwald 19y ago
I was trying to satarize all the people elsewhere complaining about the last paragraph. As you can see, I am not a very funny writer. I like the post very much. His point about Lotus taking over MSFT reminded me of Jamie Zawinski's story about Collabra taking over Netscape: "Our punishment for that success was that management saw this general-purpose mail reader and said, "since this mail reader is popular with normal people, we must now pimp it out to `The Enterprise', call it Groupware, and try to compete with Lotus Notes!" "To do this, they bought a company called Collabra who had tried (and, mostly, failed) to do something similar to what we had accomplished. They bought this company and spliced 4 layers of management in above us. Somehow, Collabra managed to completely take control of Netscape: it was like Netscape had gotten acquired instead of the other way around. "And then they went off into the weeds so badly that the Collabra-driven "3.0" release was obviously going to be so mind-blowingly late that "2.1" became "3.0" and "3.0" became "4.0". (So yeah, 3.0 didn't just seem like the bugfix patch-release for 2.0: it was.)" http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html
- Xichekolas 19y ago
  I also enjoyed the vast majority of the article, but I have to admit the last paragraph was annoying. It just seems like everything Joel writes these days (since he started his Road Show) is Submarine.[1] I realize everyone is going to talk about what they are doing, and Joel does Fog Creek, but I can't help getting that greasy used-car salesman feeling. I don't own Joel, and he owes me nothing, but it still makes me sad, because I used to enjoy his blog so much. Really it just seems like that article should have been two. One about architecture astronauts, which was quite insightful and amusing, and one about the annoyance of competing on salary with Google/MSFT. Putting them together just makes Article #2 looking like the hidden motive for Article #1, which makes it seem like he didn't really mean the stuff he said for #1, he just said it to segue into #2. And as for his salary issues: I thought Joel's whole deal was that he hired rockstars and treated them like Made Men. Salary isn't the only component of that, and probably not even the most important. Complaining about bigger players offering higher salaries is like complaining that some people are born richer. Complaining about it gets you nothing. You don't compete with someone by playing to their strength. You compete by playing to their weakness. All he has to do is keep trumpeting about his sweet office space and small team/fun environment, and he will have plenty of rockstars. Oh, and thanks for the JWZ link. I love his stuff! [1] If anyone doesn't know what I mean by Submarine... here ya go: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
  - raganwald 19y ago
    I guess blog posts are often glass half-empty/half-full thingies. It's totally valid to feel that the annoyance of the empty part of the glass outweighs the enjoyment of the half-full part. On my good days, I feel a lot more charitable about such things than on my bad days. It's dogs are sages all over again: http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/03/programmers-are-sages.html http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/03/programmers-are-sages.ht...
    - delano 19y ago
      I reread your comment with fresh eyes and I can see the sarcasm now. I kind of feel like the Mitch Hedberg joke: My friend said to me, "I think the weather's trippy." I said, "No, man, it's not the weather that's trippy, perhaps it is the way that we perceive it that is indeed trippy." Then I thought, "Man, I should've just said, 'Yeah.'" Anyway, enjoy the coffee!
      - raganwald 19y ago
        + a bushel of upmods for the Mitch Hedberg reference. Somehow, I think Mitch would have been a Bipolar Lisp Programmer if he was into programming... http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm
        delano 19y ago
        That's a great essay. Funny, sad, and true. "Veteran programmers of many years with obvious ability and talent go down with a fit of the blues. The intelligence is directed inwards in mournful contemplation of the inadequacies of their favourite programming language." I actually laughed out loud.

It sounds more like a dig on their programming experience.

by delano 19y ago

It sounds more like a dig on their programming experience.

I was trying to satarize all the people elsewhere complaining about the last paragraph. As you can see, I am not a very funny writer. I like the post very much. His point about Lotus taking over MSFT reminded me of Jamie Zawinski's story about Collabra taking over Netscape: "Our punishment for that success was that management saw this general-purpose mail reader and said, "since this mail reader is popular with normal people, we must now pimp it out to `The Enterprise', call it Groupware, and try to compete with Lotus Notes!" "To do this, they bought a company called Collabra who had tried (and, mostly, failed) to do something similar to what we had accomplished. They bought this company and spliced 4 layers of management in above us. Somehow, Collabra managed to completely take control of Netscape: it was like Netscape had gotten acquired instead of the other way around. "And then they went off into the weeds so badly that the Collabra-driven "3.0" release was obviously going to be so mind-blowingly late that "2.1" became "3.0" and "3.0" became "4.0". (So yeah, 3.0 didn't just seem like the bugfix patch-release for 2.0: it was.)" http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

Xichekolas 19y ago
I also enjoyed the vast majority of the article, but I have to admit the last paragraph was annoying. It just seems like everything Joel writes these days (since he started his Road Show) is Submarine.[1] I realize everyone is going to talk about what they are doing, and Joel does Fog Creek, but I can't help getting that greasy used-car salesman feeling. I don't own Joel, and he owes me nothing, but it still makes me sad, because I used to enjoy his blog so much. Really it just seems like that article should have been two. One about architecture astronauts, which was quite insightful and amusing, and one about the annoyance of competing on salary with Google/MSFT. Putting them together just makes Article #2 looking like the hidden motive for Article #1, which makes it seem like he didn't really mean the stuff he said for #1, he just said it to segue into #2. And as for his salary issues: I thought Joel's whole deal was that he hired rockstars and treated them like Made Men. Salary isn't the only component of that, and probably not even the most important. Complaining about bigger players offering higher salaries is like complaining that some people are born richer. Complaining about it gets you nothing. You don't compete with someone by playing to their strength. You compete by playing to their weakness. All he has to do is keep trumpeting about his sweet office space and small team/fun environment, and he will have plenty of rockstars. Oh, and thanks for the JWZ link. I love his stuff! [1] If anyone doesn't know what I mean by Submarine... here ya go: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- raganwald 19y ago
  I guess blog posts are often glass half-empty/half-full thingies. It's totally valid to feel that the annoyance of the empty part of the glass outweighs the enjoyment of the half-full part. On my good days, I feel a lot more charitable about such things than on my bad days. It's dogs are sages all over again: http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/03/programmers-are-sages.html http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/03/programmers-are-sages.ht...
  - delano 19y ago
    I reread your comment with fresh eyes and I can see the sarcasm now. I kind of feel like the Mitch Hedberg joke: My friend said to me, "I think the weather's trippy." I said, "No, man, it's not the weather that's trippy, perhaps it is the way that we perceive it that is indeed trippy." Then I thought, "Man, I should've just said, 'Yeah.'" Anyway, enjoy the coffee!
    - raganwald 19y ago
      + a bushel of upmods for the Mitch Hedberg reference. Somehow, I think Mitch would have been a Bipolar Lisp Programmer if he was into programming... http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm
      - delano 19y ago
        That's a great essay. Funny, sad, and true. "Veteran programmers of many years with obvious ability and talent go down with a fit of the blues. The intelligence is directed inwards in mournful contemplation of the inadequacies of their favourite programming language." I actually laughed out loud.