Having read most of Spolsky's blog posts, I'll make the inference that the spec being functional and having reference to code conventions isn't a far stretch fo

Having read most of Spolsky's blog posts, I'll make the inference that the spec being functional and having reference to code conventions isn't a far stretch for him. He worked at Microsoft in the Excel group, specifically, he was a Program Manager (PM) on Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). see bottom of https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/04/25/vba-for-macintosh-goes-away/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/04/25/vba-for-macintosh-... and https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev... Functional specs and PMs go hand in hand at MS. Microsoft devs, at least in certain groups, used the Hungarian coding convention (Systems aka DOS/Windows group had one dialect, Apps aka Office had another dialect) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation This seeped into VB/VBA as well.