
Joel Spolsky's talk at Yale, part 1 - gensym
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/12/03.html
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mon312
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.

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run4yourlives
Joel has lot's of money, you don't (I presume - wildly)

Software that changes the world is a lottery with slightly worse odds.
Software that solves boring problems effectively and elegantly is a good way
to make a living.

I'd put Fog Creek up against the latest web 2.0 fad company lasting until 2020
any day of the week. There is some merit behind that.

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michaelneale
true. their copilot app (built by interns largely) is actually pretty cool.

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jkush
and the spec he put together which outlines copilot is a pretty good read:

Spec: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/RandomStuff/copilot_spec.pdf>

Article: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/AardvarkSpec.html>

~~~
michaelneale
yeah, actually that whole thing was fascinating to watch. The process actually
worked. I think there is a bit much weight put on the process though, lets
face it, the people involved were brilliant. They could have started with a
wet towel and got something great out of it.

That reminds me, there was a DVD - anyone watch that? I have been meaning to
buy it.

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

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nkohari
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
what the hell is wasabi? VBScript with picture functions?

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hello_moto
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".

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ntoshev
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.

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Goladus
This is a brilliant recruiting speech.

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Goladus
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.

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downer
_"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.

~~~
Tichy
I think deserve some credit for getting a hold on the hardware diversity mess.
A problem that Apple never had to solve.

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downer
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.

