5 ms·

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.

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.