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0 pointskondro15y ago0 comments

You're right, .NET (even though I despise it) scales as well as anything else. Scalability is much more about design decisions than language/platform choice.

However, Joel Spolsky is a tool. Everyone I know and respect thinks he's a tool. He is a prime example of being successful because of being lucky, rather than being good. Do not quote Joel, he can't form a valid argument for a topic without circling back on himself to save his life.

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7 comments · 2 top-level

MortenK15y ago· 3 in thread

Whether Joel Spolsky is or is not a tool, lucky, good etc is completely irrelevant. He and the rest of the SE/SO team has built a highly scalable solution based on .NET. So in a discussion about scaling on .NET, it absolutely makes sense to listen to his experiences.

kondroOP15y ago

Actually, FogBugz is trivial to scale - there is never any more than a few dozen, to hundreds of users for any one project.

And Copilot wasn't even envisaged or created by Joel, but was rather a project created by some interns.

FogCreek doesn't innovate (they have a bug tracker and a remote support application based on VNC). Joel just happened to be one of the first to blog constantly about technology. He doesn't even allow comments on his posts because he doesn't want to have to deal with people contradicting him (not that he doesn't do an excellent job at this himself).

There are so many great developers and businesses out there that you could use as an example to model your business and software on. Use them, not Joel. Let Joel's business and opinions fade away as other smart, innovative companies run rings around his ageing product suite.

johns15y ago

Joel wrote the spec for Copilot, so it's a little unfair to claim he had nothing to do with it.

arethuza15y ago

SE/SO == "Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow"

1 more reply

arethuza15y ago· 2 in thread

At the other end of the spectrum of possibilities Joel's team at Fogcreek developed their own platform:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01b.html

So I would say that he's actually got a pretty interesting perspective on choosing technology platforms for web applications.

kondroOP15y ago

Actually, that article is one of the most interesting and useful examples to point to when discussing the insanity that is Joel. That solution is just so ridiculous.

His software runs on a compiler that has had 2 months work put into it and worse, it compiles to either VBScript or PHP.

It's probably the most counter-intuitive solution ever implemented to solve the problem of needing a web-based application to run on both Windows and Linux.

johns15y ago

Except when it came time to move to .NET/Mono, they only had to update their compiler to generate IL instead of rewriting the whole app from scratch. Sounds smart to me.

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7 comments · 2 top-level

MortenK15y ago· 3 in thread

kondroOP15y ago

Actually, FogBugz is trivial to scale - there is never any more than a few dozen, to hundreds of users for any one project.

And Copilot wasn't even envisaged or created by Joel, but was rather a project created by some interns.

johns15y ago

Joel wrote the spec for Copilot, so it's a little unfair to claim he had nothing to do with it.

arethuza15y ago

SE/SO == "Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow"

1 more reply

arethuza15y ago· 2 in thread

At the other end of the spectrum of possibilities Joel's team at Fogcreek developed their own platform:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01b.html

So I would say that he's actually got a pretty interesting perspective on choosing technology platforms for web applications.

kondroOP15y ago

Actually, that article is one of the most interesting and useful examples to point to when discussing the insanity that is Joel. That solution is just so ridiculous.

His software runs on a compiler that has had 2 months work put into it and worse, it compiles to either VBScript or PHP.

It's probably the most counter-intuitive solution ever implemented to solve the problem of needing a web-based application to run on both Windows and Linux.

johns15y ago

Except when it came time to move to .NET/Mono, they only had to update their compiler to generate IL instead of rewriting the whole app from scratch. Sounds smart to me.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse