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I don't actually think that aged very well. Joel's company has been renamed after a product that's two years old, and his mature product has been fading in the

by cwyers 7y ago

I don't actually think that aged very well. Joel's company has been renamed after a product that's two years old, and his mature product has been fading in the market as newer alternatives like Jira and Asana and (ironically) Trello take over its market share.

mixmastamyk 7y ago
Just because building mature software takes a long time, doesn't mean the market or a company can't move in another direction in the meantime. Photoshop is an example of a product that still maintains its market fit after decades, and why folks complain about alternatives.
- cwyers 7y ago
  Building mature software can take a long time, I agree. It depends a lot on the complexity (an operating system is obviously more complex than a solitaire game). The part I disagree with is the idea that you get to done. Photoshop is a great example. It's over 30 years old. Would Photoshop still hold its market position if it reached maturity 20 years ago and said "we're done?" Ignore UI changes and support for new OSes for a second. Would Photoshop be the market leader without Camera RAW support? High Dynamic Range? GPU acceleration? Just look at Photoshop's version history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_version_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_version_history You don't have to agree with every change they've made, but there's a lot of serious features that got released after Year 10 that are need-to-have features. I don't think Photoshop 5.5 was the last Photoshop professionals needed. Meanwhile, Affinity Photo is only four years old, and while if you had to choose between them Photoshop still has a lot of things Affinity doesn't, I'd pick it over Photoshop 5.5 in a heartbeat.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    He’s saying it takes at least ten years, not that it stops there.
    - cwyers 7y ago
      > But that’s just the first ten years. After that, nobody can think of a single feature that they really need. Is there anything you need that Excel 2000 or Windows 2000 doesn’t already do? With all due respect to my friends on the Office team, I can’t help but feel that there hasn’t been a useful new feature in Office since about 1995. Many of the so-called “features” added since then, like the reviled ex-paperclip and auto-document-mangling, are just annoyances and O’Reilly is doing a nice business selling books telling you how to turn them off. > So, it takes a long time to write a good program, but when it’s done, it’s done. Oh sure, you can crank out a new version every year or two, trying to get the upgrade revenues, but eventually people will ask: “why fix what ain’t broken?”
      - mixmastamyk 7y ago
        You can always find an example of something in software. He’s also being facetious. A pedantic reading is not very helpful here.

by cwyers 7y ago

mixmastamyk 7y ago

Just because building mature software takes a long time, doesn't mean the market or a company can't move in another direction in the meantime. Photoshop is an example of a product that still maintains its market fit after decades, and why folks complain about alternatives.

cwyers 7y ago
Building mature software can take a long time, I agree. It depends a lot on the complexity (an operating system is obviously more complex than a solitaire game). The part I disagree with is the idea that you get to done. Photoshop is a great example. It's over 30 years old. Would Photoshop still hold its market position if it reached maturity 20 years ago and said "we're done?" Ignore UI changes and support for new OSes for a second. Would Photoshop be the market leader without Camera RAW support? High Dynamic Range? GPU acceleration? Just look at Photoshop's version history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_version_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_version_history You don't have to agree with every change they've made, but there's a lot of serious features that got released after Year 10 that are need-to-have features. I don't think Photoshop 5.5 was the last Photoshop professionals needed. Meanwhile, Affinity Photo is only four years old, and while if you had to choose between them Photoshop still has a lot of things Affinity doesn't, I'd pick it over Photoshop 5.5 in a heartbeat.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  He’s saying it takes at least ten years, not that it stops there.
  - cwyers 7y ago
    > But that’s just the first ten years. After that, nobody can think of a single feature that they really need. Is there anything you need that Excel 2000 or Windows 2000 doesn’t already do? With all due respect to my friends on the Office team, I can’t help but feel that there hasn’t been a useful new feature in Office since about 1995. Many of the so-called “features” added since then, like the reviled ex-paperclip and auto-document-mangling, are just annoyances and O’Reilly is doing a nice business selling books telling you how to turn them off. > So, it takes a long time to write a good program, but when it’s done, it’s done. Oh sure, you can crank out a new version every year or two, trying to get the upgrade revenues, but eventually people will ask: “why fix what ain’t broken?”
    - mixmastamyk 7y ago
      You can always find an example of something in software. He’s also being facetious. A pedantic reading is not very helpful here.