I've never been a fan of Joel's writing, but he kind of clinched the deal with this one. To quote:
...the bottom line is that there are three and a half platforms (C#, Java, PHP, and a half Python) that are all equally likely to make you successful, an infinity of platforms where you're pretty much guaranteed to fail spectacularly when it's too late to change anything (Lisp, ISAPI DLLs written in C, Perl)...
I just hope I can fail as spectacularly as Amazon, Yahoo, and TicketMaster have with their use of Perl.
And incidentally, eBay was originally an ISAPI DLL.
Fini!
sigzero on 2006-09-01T21:03:34
Yeah, just because he blogs doesn't mean he knows jack about what he is talking about.
Pop culture references are fun!
Alias on 2006-09-01T21:50:02
So, like, now can we say "Joel has jumped the shark" ???
Re:Pop culture references are fun!
sigzero on 2006-09-01T22:44:42
I can agree with that.
He has a couple of turkey ideas
brian_d_foy on 2006-09-02T15:29:56
Anyone who writes enough will eventually say something stupid. The trick isn't to beleive the linux-kiddie hype about normal people who somehow made a name for themselves.
I know Joel's bias when it comes to choosing technology, but ignoring that stuff, I think he has a better signal-to-noise ratio than most people. Although stated poorly in this essay, his central message is that people matter more than the choice of technology.
I was more concerned about his essay
talking about anonymous functions as if it was an obscure language feature. He goes on to talk about map and reduce. He asked "Can your language do this?" Well, sure, because I use Perl.
He talks a good game, apparently, when it comes to technology, but it's not-so-obvious to most people he has limited experience (just like the rest of us). His stuff on project management is much better, in my opinion.
Re:He has a couple of turkey ideas
Aristotle on 2006-09-03T23:44:46
His stuff on project management is much better, in my opinion.
Yeah, I am inching towards that conclusion about him as well.
