8 ms·

Joel Spolsky's talk at Yale, part 1

73 points by gensym 19y ago

create_account 19y ago
Splosky's elitism would be easier to take if his company weren't so pedestrian.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  It seems that, if anything, he's attacking the ivory tower mentality that a lot of geeks have. He's looking at the whole software picture, rather than just the utilitarian aspect.
- palish 19y ago
  Jane says that her car's engine has a problem. Jane works at a bakery. Therefore, Jane is wrong.
- henning 19y ago
  Real programmers work on bug trackers. You can move the columns in tables around, for gods' sake! Why don't you people appreciate genius when you see it? I bet it's because you don't understand pointer arithmetic. Morons...
  - michaelneale 19y ago
    And recursion. You ignorant clod. You forgot recursion. Clearly you will never rise to the level of writing bug trackers in VBScript.
    - henning 19y ago
      Not straight up VBScript -- a poorly designed Basic dialect that is less powerful than VB.NET and far less general.
      - michaelneale 19y ago
        Actually I didn't really mind the wasabi thing. Odd, yes, but hey, they already had it all working in asp.
  - Goladus 19y ago
    And yet, I spent 5 years working for a company using Peregrine ServiceCenter, the most god-awful piece of junk software I've ever seen, for trouble-tickets. I actually once measured how much time was lost in a day because of its suck. It wasn't insignificant, and it didn't even begin to cover the emotional effects on productivity. I hated it with a passion, to the point where it would be personal revenge for me to drive Peregrine out of business (at least out of the trouble-ticket software business).
    - henning 19y ago
      I have been forced to use terrible software before so I can empathize. This is why $DEITY invented Trac.
    - run4yourlives 19y ago
      I feel the same, only my hatred is saved for lotus notes.
- nkohari 19y ago
  Spolsky has a lot of good things to say, but he does take it a little too far sometimes. His technical credibility took a major hit in my eyes when I heard about the mess that is Wasabi. Still, the way he runs his company is very innovative, and he has a lot of good things to say about enhancing productivity. Overall, I wouldn't say he's a great technical resource, but in terms of running a successful niche business, he's got some good ideas.
  - staticshock 19y ago
    what the hell is wasabi? VBScript with picture functions?
    - hello_moto 19y ago
      It's his secret weapon to build his product both in ASP and PHP. I bet if you were him you'd say "go away customer, I only write my software in Rails/LISP/Haskell".
  - jkush 19y ago
    I think Wasabi is very misunderstood. Creating a meta language that "compiles" down to PHP or ASP makes a lot of sense. Don't we need every advantage we can get? If doing that speeds up his development cycle and helps him support both Linux and Windows customers, I wouldn't call that a mess. It's unorthodox maybe, but not a mess.
downer 19y ago
"The old testers at Microsoft checked lots of things: they checked if fonts were consistent and legible, they checked that the location of controls on dialog boxes was reasonable and neatly aligned, they checked whether the screen flickered when you did things, they looked at how the UI flowed" That's a crack-up. Please, regale us with more tales of the incredible quality of Microsoft products of the 90's.
- run4yourlives 19y ago
  They are used by 90% of the marketplace afterall.
- Tichy 19y ago
  I think deserve some credit for getting a hold on the hardware diversity mess. A problem that Apple never had to solve.
  - downer 19y ago
    They didn't customize their applications for different types of hardware, and drivers are made by the manufacturer, so this is a non-point. Windows et al. were ugly, buggy and crashing due to software problems, not hardware.
- mojuba 19y ago
  they looked at how the UI flowed UI may flow well, except it may flow in a wrong direction. In 90's there were pieces of software that were close to the definition of "crappy" in terms of bugs, UI flow and even screen flickering, yet they delivered such a value that users forgave their mistakes. First that comes to mind is Macromedia Dreamweaver, also Cakewalk Pro Audio.
mon312 19y ago
I have read many of Joel's posts and most of them I find quite lame. There is no substance. His world seems to be centered around how to developing boring software optimally rather than making next generation of software which nobody has ever made. This is apparent from his ideas against the grad school where you actually learn to do new things and also looking at the kind of software which fog creek makes which seriously makes me want to yawn. Why is he given so much importance by the people? I really don't understand.
- mynameishere 19y ago
  rather than making next generation of software which nobody has ever made. Yeah, good luck. I think Carmack performed the last instance of that right around 1993. Most Web 2.0 applications that I've seen are basically CRUD apps.
  - henning 19y ago
    How about DabbleDB?
    - michaelneale 19y ago
      they have a bit of competition now http://www.oncetechnologies.com/radix/ http://www.oncetechnologies.com/radix/ http://www.aphplix.org/ http://www.aphplix.org/ probably 100's of others (probably not as good though). Dabble db is pre web2.0 though.
- Tichy 19y ago
  Yeah it looks so much sexier to throw together some lines of rails code over the weekend and become a millionaire over night. However, most of the time getting successful actually entails some hard work. So don't laugh about Joel's posts too soon. Besides, his latest feature for estimates sounded quite interesting (when he described it, anyway). Certainly more interesting than yet another "vote me up, vote me down" Web 2.0 application.
  - 19y ago
Goladus 19y ago
This is a brilliant recruiting speech.
- Goladus 19y ago
  I just wanted to mention that was a serious comment. If you currently own a software company and are interested in hiring college graduates, it might be wise to take some notes rather than bashing Fog Creek, its products, or Joel's elitism.
ntoshev 19y ago
One thing from the article I found interesting is that a very detailed spec is equivalent to the program. That is, I found it interesting when I "discovered" it a few years ago. Let's try a little poll: if you found that interesting and already knew it, upvote this comment. If you found it interesting but didn't know it, downvote it. If you didn't find that interesting, don't vote.

73 points by gensym 19y ago

create_account 19y ago

Splosky's elitism would be easier to take if his company weren't so pedestrian.

mattmaroon 19y ago
It seems that, if anything, he's attacking the ivory tower mentality that a lot of geeks have. He's looking at the whole software picture, rather than just the utilitarian aspect.
palish 19y ago
Jane says that her car's engine has a problem. Jane works at a bakery. Therefore, Jane is wrong.
henning 19y ago
Real programmers work on bug trackers. You can move the columns in tables around, for gods' sake! Why don't you people appreciate genius when you see it? I bet it's because you don't understand pointer arithmetic. Morons...
- michaelneale 19y ago
  And recursion. You ignorant clod. You forgot recursion. Clearly you will never rise to the level of writing bug trackers in VBScript.
  - henning 19y ago
    Not straight up VBScript -- a poorly designed Basic dialect that is less powerful than VB.NET and far less general.
    - michaelneale 19y ago
      Actually I didn't really mind the wasabi thing. Odd, yes, but hey, they already had it all working in asp.
- Goladus 19y ago
  And yet, I spent 5 years working for a company using Peregrine ServiceCenter, the most god-awful piece of junk software I've ever seen, for trouble-tickets. I actually once measured how much time was lost in a day because of its suck. It wasn't insignificant, and it didn't even begin to cover the emotional effects on productivity. I hated it with a passion, to the point where it would be personal revenge for me to drive Peregrine out of business (at least out of the trouble-ticket software business).
  - henning 19y ago
    I have been forced to use terrible software before so I can empathize. This is why $DEITY invented Trac.
  - run4yourlives 19y ago
    I feel the same, only my hatred is saved for lotus notes.
nkohari 19y ago
Spolsky has a lot of good things to say, but he does take it a little too far sometimes. His technical credibility took a major hit in my eyes when I heard about the mess that is Wasabi. Still, the way he runs his company is very innovative, and he has a lot of good things to say about enhancing productivity. Overall, I wouldn't say he's a great technical resource, but in terms of running a successful niche business, he's got some good ideas.
- staticshock 19y ago
  what the hell is wasabi? VBScript with picture functions?
  - hello_moto 19y ago
    It's his secret weapon to build his product both in ASP and PHP. I bet if you were him you'd say "go away customer, I only write my software in Rails/LISP/Haskell".
- jkush 19y ago
  I think Wasabi is very misunderstood. Creating a meta language that "compiles" down to PHP or ASP makes a lot of sense. Don't we need every advantage we can get? If doing that speeds up his development cycle and helps him support both Linux and Windows customers, I wouldn't call that a mess. It's unorthodox maybe, but not a mess.

downer 19y ago

"The old testers at Microsoft checked lots of things: they checked if fonts were consistent and legible, they checked that the location of controls on dialog boxes was reasonable and neatly aligned, they checked whether the screen flickered when you did things, they looked at how the UI flowed" That's a crack-up. Please, regale us with more tales of the incredible quality of Microsoft products of the 90's.

run4yourlives 19y ago
They are used by 90% of the marketplace afterall.
Tichy 19y ago
I think deserve some credit for getting a hold on the hardware diversity mess. A problem that Apple never had to solve.
- downer 19y ago
  They didn't customize their applications for different types of hardware, and drivers are made by the manufacturer, so this is a non-point. Windows et al. were ugly, buggy and crashing due to software problems, not hardware.
mojuba 19y ago
they looked at how the UI flowed UI may flow well, except it may flow in a wrong direction. In 90's there were pieces of software that were close to the definition of "crappy" in terms of bugs, UI flow and even screen flickering, yet they delivered such a value that users forgave their mistakes. First that comes to mind is Macromedia Dreamweaver, also Cakewalk Pro Audio.

mon312 19y ago

I have read many of Joel's posts and most of them I find quite lame. There is no substance. His world seems to be centered around how to developing boring software optimally rather than making next generation of software which nobody has ever made. This is apparent from his ideas against the grad school where you actually learn to do new things and also looking at the kind of software which fog creek makes which seriously makes me want to yawn. Why is he given so much importance by the people? I really don't understand.

mynameishere 19y ago
rather than making next generation of software which nobody has ever made. Yeah, good luck. I think Carmack performed the last instance of that right around 1993. Most Web 2.0 applications that I've seen are basically CRUD apps.
- henning 19y ago
  How about DabbleDB?
  - michaelneale 19y ago
    they have a bit of competition now http://www.oncetechnologies.com/radix/ http://www.oncetechnologies.com/radix/ http://www.aphplix.org/ http://www.aphplix.org/ probably 100's of others (probably not as good though). Dabble db is pre web2.0 though.
Tichy 19y ago
Yeah it looks so much sexier to throw together some lines of rails code over the weekend and become a millionaire over night. However, most of the time getting successful actually entails some hard work. So don't laugh about Joel's posts too soon. Besides, his latest feature for estimates sounded quite interesting (when he described it, anyway). Certainly more interesting than yet another "vote me up, vote me down" Web 2.0 application.
- 19y ago

Goladus 19y ago

This is a brilliant recruiting speech.

Goladus 19y ago
I just wanted to mention that was a serious comment. If you currently own a software company and are interested in hiring college graduates, it might be wise to take some notes rather than bashing Fog Creek, its products, or Joel's elitism.

ntoshev 19y ago

One thing from the article I found interesting is that a very detailed spec is equivalent to the program. That is, I found it interesting when I "discovered" it a few years ago. Let's try a little poll: if you found that interesting and already knew it, upvote this comment. If you found it interesting but didn't know it, downvote it. If you didn't find that interesting, don't vote.