6 ms·
California
- nickb 19y agoYet another article from Joel that's a thinly-veiled ad for FogBugz... antiquated bug tracking soft.
- rms 19y agoIt was so easy to vote up because it was entertaining, but no more intellectually stimulating than a typical [pic].
- rkts 19y agoWhy is there so much hostility toward Joel here? He writes interesting and popular articles and half the comments just attack him for not being substantive or serious enough.
- dcurtis 19y agoBecause his stuff is not substantive or serious enough. His article even cuts off at the end and moves into an advertisement for his software. Tacky.
- olavk 19y agoJoel have written some really insightful and influential pieces about software development and business strategy. When he started blogging, almost every post were a classic. Of course this were insights he had accumulated through many years, its hard to keep churning out great insights on a regular basis, so I think people just get disappointed. Also, his insights are mostly related to business and high-level decisions. When he writes about coding, his opinions seem slightly curious: exceptions suck, Hungarian notation rules and so on.
- rkts 19y ago> exceptions suck, Hungarian notation rules and so on. Have you actually read his article on this? I think it's very good. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html Joel doesn't say that you should prefix integer variables with 'i' or use -1 as an error code (he prefers returning multiple values). He only says that every line of code should indicate as clearly as possible what it's doing so that you can still understand it six months later. Exceptions eliminate one problem (a function can only return one value) but introduce another: it's impossible to tell by looking at a block of code where it will exit. If a series of statements might get interrupted halfway through, there needs to be an indication of this or else it's very easy to create bugs. I know this from experience.
- olavk 19y agoRegarding Hungarian notation, it's really a kind of type system with explicit typing, except the type checking is done by the programmer reading the code rather than the compiler. Kind of the worst of the static and dynamic worlds combined. He could solve the tainting problem by just wrapping the unsafe string in an object. This would be safer even in a dynamically typed language. His example is only relevant to very early versions of VBScript that didn't support classes. Regarding exceptions, they are NOT supposed to be used for returning multiple values. They supposed to be used for exceptional results that cannot be handled locally. They don't have to be "invisible", e.g. in Java you have to either explicitly handle an exception or explicitly declare that you may propagate it. Using return values OTOH you may forget to handle a return value, and the compiler will not complain. His complaint is more valid wrt. C# where exceptions are indeed not checked by the compiler. But since he don't even seem to be aware of this difference, I'm pretty sure he knows about neither.
- rkts 19y ago> They supposed to be used for exceptional results that cannot be handled locally. The point is that there is no such thing. Exceptional situations should always be handled locally, and by locally I mean on the very next line. If they can't be, then the program should stop running. Writing code with exceptions is very hard to get right. Not checking return values is just stupid.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- bootload 19y ago"... Yet another article from "Foo" that's a thinly-veiled ad for 'Bar' ..." HackerNews is an ad for yc, pg's articles and talks are for publicising yc. I think the real difference b/w blatant advertising and the type Joel and pg (Buchheit, Greenspun, Yegge, maybe 37Sigs) is they impart knowledge, useful knowledge. If they did not entertain, inform and question readers wouldn't bother reading their pieces. But I do understand the continuous 'Fogbugz' references. Maybe it's the geek in you rejecting someone telling you need something when you don't.
- bootload 19y agoHaving said that and re-read the article I couldn't be struck by the adverts (jobs & fogbugz) then the left hand sidebar and lots of black text and hard edged images (images of rego screens), squashed text (lots of spaces on LH & RH side). Maybe nickb is right. The page design also sucks making it hard to read and possibly needs some attention?
- Zak 19y ago>pg's articles and talks are for publicising yc. I don't think so. PG was writing essays and giving talks about startups before YC.
- pfedor 19y agoWhen I first started reading PG's articles, I assumed he wrote them in order to prepare the ground for Arc. I still think it might have been partly true initially, and then his priorities changed.
- motoko 19y agoThe only thing Joel is good at making is Digg bait.... and apparently news.combinator bait.
- abrown 19y agoOk, so maybe it's an ad or maybe it's a little interesting post and an update on his FogBugz tour which he has been posting about for months. At least he is consistent. And what is so antiquated about FogBugz? Have you ever used the software? It actually works quite well. -Joel Fanboy
- vlad 19y agoHe has a point. Sometimes you look at a product (including software) and you wonder what the certain buttons or phrases are for! Most companies simply do not put thought into their products. They just literally copy the feature with a color, shape, or phrasing change and stick it onto their copy-cat product. No thought is put into why the other company chose to do it and if there are better ways of solving the same problem. This is a great example of this.
- dmpayton 19y agoEh, California isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's crowded, it's expensive, there is insane traffic, and the schools are far below decent. Sunny beaches and summer fun are one thing... Reality, I'm afraid, is much different. And I've lived here my whole life.
- jey 19y agoTry living elsewhere, then you'll see how much California rocks in comparison. I grew up in San Diego, never appreciated it fully until I left.
- kingnothing 19y agoDid this same conversation take place some months ago, or am I having one wicked case of deja vous?
- gibsonf1 19y agoCalifornia is a huge state with many different experiences - what city do you live in? I lived in Pasadena for about a year. Between having to drive forever to get anywhere in dense traffic, the intense smog, and the lack of a cultural core - it made for a terrible experience. San Francisco, on the other hand, is hard to beat.
- danielha 19y agoCentral CA is rarely representative of most people's perception of the state.
- daniel-cussen 19y agoAfter visiting Palo Alto for three months when I was five, I lived in Chile for fourteen years. I just got back to Palo Alto two weeks ago, and it's indescribably awesome.
- geebee 19y agoI've noticed "Made In California" as well, and it's an interesting choice of words for Apple. It brings to mind PG's counter-example of the iPod to the "Squalor of the man-made bits of America" (in his Made In USA essay). When I lived in Europe, I noticed that general stereotypes of the "USA" differed dramatically from impressions of "LA", "San Francisco", "New York", "California". When you say "USA", people around the world often think of an economic and military juggernaut. If you say "California", they often think "surfers, technology, Ahnold, the Golden Gate Bridge," and so forth. Various cities in the US also have their own international reputations. It's pretty clear that the rest of the world has very negative and very positive impressions of the United States, and these can be triggered by how you present yourself. Perhaps Apple is trying to grab a more positive reaction by claiming California rather than the USA? When Bush refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty, there was some talk in England about boycotting US products (pretty hopeless idea there, but it shows the anger). California did raise its international brand by bucking that trend. I expect the US will regain some of its stature once the current administration is gone, but even if/when it does, I'd expect more local branding. Cities compete with each other more than countries do. What does it even mean to say it was "Made in the USA" anymore? If it's made in Seattle, Sydney, or Barcelona, it isn't made in San Francisco. We may be moving toward a world economy where that's the only thing that actually matters.
- anamax 19y ago> When Bush refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty, there was some talk in England about boycotting US products (pretty hopeless idea there, but it shows the anger). Actually, it shows ignorance. The US president doesn't ratify treaties, the Senate does. And, the Senate voted Kyoto down 95-0 during the Clinton years. You got played by Clinton, but you can't object too much because you didn't bother to comply either.
- geebee 19y agoYou're absolutely right: that my use of the word "ratify" was incorrect. The senate does indeed ratify treaties. And the senate did reject Kyoto (which may have needed some work), as you have said. But one debating tactic I've noticed in people with a weak argument: they go quickly to detail, identify flaws in phrasing, redefine words, argue over procedural details. Sometimes this is referred to as a "strawman argument", where you take your opponent's argument in its weakest form, and knock it down. I'd like to invite you to take the argument in its strongest form, and actually say something substantive. So instead of "refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty," let's instead say "actively undermined efforts to take meaningful action against global warming." That would be taking the argument in a stronger form, and would give you an opportunity to explain how the Bush administration does not deserve a reputation for undermining efforts to combat global warming. So... would you claim that George Bush has nothing to do with the America's rejection of the Kyoto treaty, or America's remarkable inaction on global warming in general? And would you disagree that his administration has repeatedly tried to undermine California's efforts to do something about it? Before we start arguing about votes and procedures, I'd like to hear your big picture view on this issue.
- choward93 19y agoUgh, Im tired of Seattle stereotypes. Seattle is a well cultured city, and his generalizations are pretty weak to prove his point, not mention irrelevant. Sorry, I just have to stick up for my home town. BTW, it rains more in NY than Seattle.
- jeffumich 19y agoPerception matters more when we're talking about something that involves emotion. Sure, it rains more in inches in NY, but not in a depressing, all day, every day sorta way. Sorry, I just have to be annoyed at the Seattle rain.
- davidw 19y agoIt may rain more in other places - I'd bet that it rains more in Padova, Italy, than my own Northwest hometown of Eugene, Oregon - but the important thing is that it is gray in the NW. Often. It may rain a bunch in a day somewhere else, but in the NW, it will drizzle for a week.
- gibsonf1 19y agoFor the one winter I lived in Seattle, we went for 4 months straight without sunshine. When a ray of light fell outside our office on the parking lot, we all ran out to revel in that one ray - I'll never forget how desperately we all missed and needed the sunlight.
- dcurtis 19y agoWell, it's easy to see why Seattle has those stereotypes. The moment you get there, all of the generalizations are instantly confirmed. It's raining, there's a Starbucks on every corner, and there (used to be) an enormous Boeing factory nearby.
- JBiserkov 19y agoSad, but true.