5 ms·

GW-Basic creator Greg Whitten on Joel Spolsky and other MS things

61 points by nickb 18y ago

lucumo 18y ago
It was mostly about Greg Whitten and what he did at Microsoft...
BigZaphod 18y ago
Interesting, but it read as kind of arrogant to me. Or perhaps bitter? I can't tell. Anyone else get that vibe?
- huhtenberg 18y ago
  Nope, didn't get that vibe at all.
- gommm 18y ago
  I got the same vibe too... I don't know exactly if what he says is true (or if it's just exaggerations) but the way he says it doesn't make me want to meet him. Especially the passage on OMG made me cringe...
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
- michael_dorfman 18y ago
  Definitely. It's hard to sit comfortably with passages like "Unfortunately, for Microsoft and .NET, I left the company in 1998. The .NET team made a number of significant mistakes."
  - tjogin 18y ago
    Yeah, especially considering how much more of a nightmare COM and the rest of the .NET predecessors were which he was involved with, as compared to .NET, which he wasn't. Maybe he's spot on, maybe not. But one thing is for sure; his story does not contain a trace of humility.
- vinutheraj 18y ago
  How many times did this guy use "I did blah blah" in his mail ... most egotistical thing I have ever heard, atleast Linus Torvalds does it sarcastically, I think this guy was really serious about everything !!
  - slackerIII 18y ago
    it was a response to Joel's claim that the only thing this guy did at msft was have lunch with Bill G. The links backing this up are on the reddit thread.
- nikblack 18y ago
  he may be bitter because when hired he took the choice of a bigger salary and the corner office in lieu of stock options
alecco 18y ago
More HN catching with top stories from Reddit. The proggit discussion has many insights. http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/82s16/has_joel_spolsky_been_honest_about_his_time_at/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/82s16/has_joel_... The context is important. First, it is in reply to this, which quotes Spolsky as: "This seemed to piss off a guy named Greg Whitten who headed up the App Architecture group. Now, Greg was something like Microsoft employee number 6. He had been around forever; nobody could quite point to anything he had done but apparently he had lunch with Bill Gates a lot and GW-BASIC was named after him." Second, the post to the mailing list itself is a forward of a private e-mail from Greg Whitten. I can't see if he said anywhere he was okay with making it public. More HN catching with proggit top stories.
sfk 18y ago
I hope that John Foust had Dr. Whitten's permission to publish this apparently private mail. To the people who say that Whitten is arrogant or bitter, please read Joel's disrespectful comments first: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles "This seemed to piss off a guy named Greg Whitten who headed up the App Architecture group. Now, Greg was something like Microsoft employee number 6. He had been around forever; nobody could quite point to anything he had done but apparently he had lunch with Bill Gates a lot and GW-BASIC was named after him."
- alecco 18y ago
  Directory Listing Denied
  - old-gregg 18y ago
    http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/TwoStories.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/TwoSt...
- allenbrunson 18y ago
  that link doesn't seem to work. this one might: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html
- earl 18y ago
  Disrespectful? So what -- Joel's comments sound accurate, particularly after reading the letter. The phrase "architecture astronaut" ran through my head over and over while reading the email. Along with arrogant ass. In particular, this line: "I was a world class expert in graph theory, analysis of algorithms, sparse matrix algorithms for linear systems, numerical analysis, and non-linear multi-variate time series analyis before arriving at Microsoft to write language compilers." Any one of the set {graph theory, algorithm analysis, numerical analysis, linear systems, and non-linear multivariate ts} is a full PhD and a full life on its own. Nobody is an expert in all 5. Frankly, he sounds like the sort of person startups in particular should stay as far away from as humanly possible. I worked for someone like this at my last startup and he was a cancer. But he could hold endless meetings, drop jargon like a master, demean fellow employees, and act as a general barrier to accomplishing useful work.
watt 18y ago
Yeah yeah, well Joel is not fan of those "Chief Software Architects" at Microsoft either. If you listen to the #44 stackoverflow podcast, he really disses those "architect" types. http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/podcast-44/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/podcast-44/
tptacek 18y ago
There are C++-style "vtables" (they're called "switch structures") in the original Unix code.
- dfox 18y ago
  There probably are even earlier examples of exactly same concept. For example Sketchpad comes to mind...
  - zmimon 18y ago
    It would be surprising to me if someone didn't build this concept with valves and vacuum tubes before 'software' even existed. People always quote it as some major milestone like the invention of the wheel or something but it honestly seems to me like a natural and obvious design that just about anybody comes up with when faced with the right set of problems to solve.
jsdalton 18y ago
Why is everybody gossiping -- both here and on proggit -- about a discussion list thread from April 2005? (Yes, it's a rhetorical question, but if there's a reason why this has suddenly become timely I'd actually like to know.)
- fh 18y ago
  > (Yes, it's a rhetorical question, but if there's a reason why this has suddenly become timely I'd actually like to know.) That I can answer. In a recent episode of the Stack Overflow podcast, Joel Spolsky mentioned that old Excel Basic story as an example of dealing with self-declared software architects. Unfortunately, I don't remember the exact episode number and the transcription wiki doesn't have it yet. But he basically didn't say anything that he hasn't already said in his "Two Stories" article (link below). (I don't know if this new discussion is particularly interesting or relevant, but that's why it suddenly erupted.) Links: Stack Overflow blog/podcast: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/ Transcription wiki: https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/?W4 https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/?W4 Old Joel article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html
  - jsdalton 18y ago
    Ah, cool, that does actually answer the question. Thanks!
smokinn 18y ago
The part about Spolsky, if true, is interesting because Joel obviously doesn't see some of the decisions he made at Microsoft as wrong since he's still doing the same thing. "He made other similarly stupid decisions like creating a custom programming interface for BASIC in Excel instead of sharing a common interface as strongly recommended. " Did anyone else think of his special Fog Creek internal programming language? I particularly like this article that says you should only write new production code in a language lots of people know and others have lots of experience in and then ends with we don't though. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html
- tptacek 18y ago
  You know, "meh". This is basically like saying, "when he was at Microsoft, Spolsky traded off the vision of a grand unified scripting architecture for all Microsoft products in favor of something that the Excel team could actually execute on and launch. Later on, when he founded Fog Creek, he allowed a developer to write a custom scripting language to implement common-codebase cross-platform, rather than waiting for the industry to come up with a totally acceptable cross-platform development environment". He sounds consistently pragmatic, if perhaps a bit inelegant.
  - rbanffy 18y ago
    "when he founded Fog Creek, he allowed a developer to write a custom scripting language to implement common-codebase cross-platform, rather than waiting using one of the many totally acceptable cross-platform development environment readily available" There. Fixed it.
leej 18y ago
If BillG has eaten lots of lunches with him then he should have been some guy for BillG and Co at least.
tphyahoo 18y ago
This just goes to show how important is to be nice ALLLL the time on the internet. The one time JS is a douche, he gets called on it big time, and there's nothing he can say to make himself seem like less of a douche. I am sure JS and GW are both perfectly fine people if you sit down with them for a cup of coffee, and if they randomly sat next to each other on a plane they'd probably get along fine too. Stuff you write stays on the internet forever.
- tptacek 18y ago
  Spolsky seems to get around this problem by not giving a shit when people on Proggit decide that he's a douche.
shimi 18y ago
I was so happy that Microsoft moved from OLE - COM to the .NET
dang 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20060505021322/http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctech/2005-April/042999.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060505021322/http://www.classi...

61 points by nickb 18y ago

lucumo 18y ago

It was mostly about Greg Whitten and what he did at Microsoft...

BigZaphod 18y ago

Interesting, but it read as kind of arrogant to me. Or perhaps bitter? I can't tell. Anyone else get that vibe?

huhtenberg 18y ago
Nope, didn't get that vibe at all.
gommm 18y ago
I got the same vibe too... I don't know exactly if what he says is true (or if it's just exaggerations) but the way he says it doesn't make me want to meet him. Especially the passage on OMG made me cringe...
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
michael_dorfman 18y ago
Definitely. It's hard to sit comfortably with passages like "Unfortunately, for Microsoft and .NET, I left the company in 1998. The .NET team made a number of significant mistakes."
- tjogin 18y ago
  Yeah, especially considering how much more of a nightmare COM and the rest of the .NET predecessors were which he was involved with, as compared to .NET, which he wasn't. Maybe he's spot on, maybe not. But one thing is for sure; his story does not contain a trace of humility.
vinutheraj 18y ago
How many times did this guy use "I did blah blah" in his mail ... most egotistical thing I have ever heard, atleast Linus Torvalds does it sarcastically, I think this guy was really serious about everything !!
- slackerIII 18y ago
  it was a response to Joel's claim that the only thing this guy did at msft was have lunch with Bill G. The links backing this up are on the reddit thread.
nikblack 18y ago
he may be bitter because when hired he took the choice of a bigger salary and the corner office in lieu of stock options

alecco 18y ago

More HN catching with top stories from Reddit. The proggit discussion has many insights. http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/82s16/has_joel_spolsky_been_honest_about_his_time_at/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/82s16/has_joel_... The context is important. First, it is in reply to this, which quotes Spolsky as: "This seemed to piss off a guy named Greg Whitten who headed up the App Architecture group. Now, Greg was something like Microsoft employee number 6. He had been around forever; nobody could quite point to anything he had done but apparently he had lunch with Bill Gates a lot and GW-BASIC was named after him." Second, the post to the mailing list itself is a forward of a private e-mail from Greg Whitten. I can't see if he said anywhere he was okay with making it public. More HN catching with proggit top stories.

sfk 18y ago

I hope that John Foust had Dr. Whitten's permission to publish this apparently private mail. To the people who say that Whitten is arrogant or bitter, please read Joel's disrespectful comments first: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles "This seemed to piss off a guy named Greg Whitten who headed up the App Architecture group. Now, Greg was something like Microsoft employee number 6. He had been around forever; nobody could quite point to anything he had done but apparently he had lunch with Bill Gates a lot and GW-BASIC was named after him."

alecco 18y ago
Directory Listing Denied
- old-gregg 18y ago
  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/TwoStories.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/TwoSt...
allenbrunson 18y ago
that link doesn't seem to work. this one might: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html
earl 18y ago
Disrespectful? So what -- Joel's comments sound accurate, particularly after reading the letter. The phrase "architecture astronaut" ran through my head over and over while reading the email. Along with arrogant ass. In particular, this line: "I was a world class expert in graph theory, analysis of algorithms, sparse matrix algorithms for linear systems, numerical analysis, and non-linear multi-variate time series analyis before arriving at Microsoft to write language compilers." Any one of the set {graph theory, algorithm analysis, numerical analysis, linear systems, and non-linear multivariate ts} is a full PhD and a full life on its own. Nobody is an expert in all 5. Frankly, he sounds like the sort of person startups in particular should stay as far away from as humanly possible. I worked for someone like this at my last startup and he was a cancer. But he could hold endless meetings, drop jargon like a master, demean fellow employees, and act as a general barrier to accomplishing useful work.

watt 18y ago

Yeah yeah, well Joel is not fan of those "Chief Software Architects" at Microsoft either. If you listen to the #44 stackoverflow podcast, he really disses those "architect" types. http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/podcast-44/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/podcast-44/

tptacek 18y ago

There are C++-style "vtables" (they're called "switch structures") in the original Unix code.

dfox 18y ago
There probably are even earlier examples of exactly same concept. For example Sketchpad comes to mind...
- zmimon 18y ago
  It would be surprising to me if someone didn't build this concept with valves and vacuum tubes before 'software' even existed. People always quote it as some major milestone like the invention of the wheel or something but it honestly seems to me like a natural and obvious design that just about anybody comes up with when faced with the right set of problems to solve.

jsdalton 18y ago

Why is everybody gossiping -- both here and on proggit -- about a discussion list thread from April 2005? (Yes, it's a rhetorical question, but if there's a reason why this has suddenly become timely I'd actually like to know.)

fh 18y ago
> (Yes, it's a rhetorical question, but if there's a reason why this has suddenly become timely I'd actually like to know.) That I can answer. In a recent episode of the Stack Overflow podcast, Joel Spolsky mentioned that old Excel Basic story as an example of dealing with self-declared software architects. Unfortunately, I don't remember the exact episode number and the transcription wiki doesn't have it yet. But he basically didn't say anything that he hasn't already said in his "Two Stories" article (link below). (I don't know if this new discussion is particularly interesting or relevant, but that's why it suddenly erupted.) Links: Stack Overflow blog/podcast: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/ Transcription wiki: https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/?W4 https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/?W4 Old Joel article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html
- jsdalton 18y ago
  Ah, cool, that does actually answer the question. Thanks!

smokinn 18y ago

The part about Spolsky, if true, is interesting because Joel obviously doesn't see some of the decisions he made at Microsoft as wrong since he's still doing the same thing. "He made other similarly stupid decisions like creating a custom programming interface for BASIC in Excel instead of sharing a common interface as strongly recommended. " Did anyone else think of his special Fog Creek internal programming language? I particularly like this article that says you should only write new production code in a language lots of people know and others have lots of experience in and then ends with we don't though. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html

tptacek 18y ago
You know, "meh". This is basically like saying, "when he was at Microsoft, Spolsky traded off the vision of a grand unified scripting architecture for all Microsoft products in favor of something that the Excel team could actually execute on and launch. Later on, when he founded Fog Creek, he allowed a developer to write a custom scripting language to implement common-codebase cross-platform, rather than waiting for the industry to come up with a totally acceptable cross-platform development environment". He sounds consistently pragmatic, if perhaps a bit inelegant.
- rbanffy 18y ago
  "when he founded Fog Creek, he allowed a developer to write a custom scripting language to implement common-codebase cross-platform, rather than waiting using one of the many totally acceptable cross-platform development environment readily available" There. Fixed it.

leej 18y ago

If BillG has eaten lots of lunches with him then he should have been some guy for BillG and Co at least.

tphyahoo 18y ago

This just goes to show how important is to be nice ALLLL the time on the internet. The one time JS is a douche, he gets called on it big time, and there's nothing he can say to make himself seem like less of a douche. I am sure JS and GW are both perfectly fine people if you sit down with them for a cup of coffee, and if they randomly sat next to each other on a plane they'd probably get along fine too. Stuff you write stays on the internet forever.

tptacek 18y ago
Spolsky seems to get around this problem by not giving a shit when people on Proggit decide that he's a douche.

shimi 18y ago

I was so happy that Microsoft moved from OLE - COM to the .NET

dang 5y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20060505021322/http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctech/2005-April/042999.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060505021322/http://www.classi...