Based on the number of popular essays Joel Spolsky has squeezed out of FogBugz, you would think it was a revolutionary software project on a par with Engelbart's 1968 demo, rather than... a bug tracker.
I have never used it myself. Perhaps it is the Platonic bug tracker. Still, like Manila or fetchmail, the project itself seems out of all proportion to the mighty river of wisdom that its author has coaxed out of it.
I haven't used Version 7, but I have used previous versions, and I can assure you, it's not at all the Platonic bug tracker. In fact, if you take a look at this article, you'll see that certain basic features (such as setting milestones) have been pretty clumsily implemented through the first 6 versions, at least.
You'd think that a team of rock stars in a a cubicle-free paradise with the benefit of Joel's wisdom would be able to really nail an application as trivial as bug tracking over the course of 7 versions. You'd think.
I'd much rather authors write about what they know rather than make stuff up about things they don't know. It's up to the audience to determine if it's worth getting something out of it.
I mean no offense, but JacobK doesn't really contribute at all to HN except to post his own self-promotional stories. Fog Creek isn't completely unique, but I see this masked soft sell all the time...
"Here is my new X feature that makes my product awesome. Here is how/why I came up with this idea, yay for me."
It's one thing to speak from experience, but I find it a little distasteful when you use it to shill a product. Fortunately many writers (like PGs essays) communicate substance without the marketing spin.
Okay Joel, we know you single-handedly wrote every line of code in Microsoft Excel. And you create homemade fairy languages like wasabi where nobody knows what the hell you are talking about but is supposedly awesome. It's all talk and no game. Contrast this with DHH. Sure he is a self-promotional prick. But guess what? He actually helps people. He puts good material out that isn't just "I came up with X which is so much better than X and here is why I'm awesome."
Listening to Joel's tech advice is like getting child-rearing advice from Lynne Spears and Dina Lohan, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
For example he is obsessed with private office for developers. Okay, whatever. Except Microsoft is waning and FogCreek has 15 employees... If someone at Facebook or Google wrote an article about private office I would listen, but they don't and they don't. Joel is a hierarchical "corporate coder" from the 1980s, and that's the only people who would benefit from his advice.
Joel had the benefit of being first-mover. He actually wrote stuff before anyone else was writing. On the internet where the writer/reader ratio is 1/1000 just being willing to start the discussion gets you halfway there. It's the Bill O'Reilly school of self-promotion.
Disclaimer, I have an irrational aversion to anything Spolsky gets close to... :)
I too have a hard time lasting it out through an essay that seems very self-promotional. Many essayists whose work I used to look forward to reading (J. Spolsky, P. Graham, etc) seem to have become stuck in a rut of beating a particular set of drums. These drums seem to promote in some way, the business interests of the person writing.
To me this diminishes their credibility and puts me off their writing.
Strangely when I see Lessig doing this for his various causes it does not inspire the same reaction in me. Possibly this is because I don't think that Lessig is deliberately writing in a way that can lead directly to personal monetary profit, although he certainly could profit from his growing cachet due to his political activity.
Haha, I love how every time someone (usually someone who works for fogcreek no doubt!) posts a story about Fog Creek on HN-- because they always get exposed for their irrelevance. Fog Creek is as relevant to HN as a ".NET Solutions Partner" from Muskogee.
I once had the displeasure of using Fogbugz (hosted version). You could only reply to a bug if it was sent in via E-mail. Any other correspondence was to be performed via actually editing the ticket data, inline.
I called to ask if there was a way and the dude I talked to actually insinuated that I had not taken time to read the documentation. WTF?
Apparently that requirement was a "feature" -- they assumed that a bug entered manually did not require correspondence.
This seems to be ignorant of the use of one-week sprints on some projects.
Also, what kind of sprint lasts "around 15 days"?
Sprints are always fixed-length (scope is varied to fit the sprint). Two-week sprints are used by some, but nobody does 15 day (aka two weeks plus one day) sprints.
16 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 52.0 ms ] threadI have never used it myself. Perhaps it is the Platonic bug tracker. Still, like Manila or fetchmail, the project itself seems out of all proportion to the mighty river of wisdom that its author has coaxed out of it.
You'd think that a team of rock stars in a a cubicle-free paradise with the benefit of Joel's wisdom would be able to really nail an application as trivial as bug tracking over the course of 7 versions. You'd think.
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=JacobK
I mean no offense, but JacobK doesn't really contribute at all to HN except to post his own self-promotional stories. Fog Creek isn't completely unique, but I see this masked soft sell all the time...
"Here is my new X feature that makes my product awesome. Here is how/why I came up with this idea, yay for me."
It's one thing to speak from experience, but I find it a little distasteful when you use it to shill a product. Fortunately many writers (like PGs essays) communicate substance without the marketing spin.
Okay Joel, we know you single-handedly wrote every line of code in Microsoft Excel. And you create homemade fairy languages like wasabi where nobody knows what the hell you are talking about but is supposedly awesome. It's all talk and no game. Contrast this with DHH. Sure he is a self-promotional prick. But guess what? He actually helps people. He puts good material out that isn't just "I came up with X which is so much better than X and here is why I'm awesome."
Listening to Joel's tech advice is like getting child-rearing advice from Lynne Spears and Dina Lohan, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
For example he is obsessed with private office for developers. Okay, whatever. Except Microsoft is waning and FogCreek has 15 employees... If someone at Facebook or Google wrote an article about private office I would listen, but they don't and they don't. Joel is a hierarchical "corporate coder" from the 1980s, and that's the only people who would benefit from his advice.
Joel had the benefit of being first-mover. He actually wrote stuff before anyone else was writing. On the internet where the writer/reader ratio is 1/1000 just being willing to start the discussion gets you halfway there. It's the Bill O'Reilly school of self-promotion.
Disclaimer, I have an irrational aversion to anything Spolsky gets close to... :)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=706988
To me this diminishes their credibility and puts me off their writing.
Strangely when I see Lessig doing this for his various causes it does not inspire the same reaction in me. Possibly this is because I don't think that Lessig is deliberately writing in a way that can lead directly to personal monetary profit, although he certainly could profit from his growing cachet due to his political activity.
Possibly I am just being cynical.
I called to ask if there was a way and the dude I talked to actually insinuated that I had not taken time to read the documentation. WTF?
Apparently that requirement was a "feature" -- they assumed that a bug entered manually did not require correspondence.
Yes, I was told that as well.
This seems to be ignorant of the use of one-week sprints on some projects. Also, what kind of sprint lasts "around 15 days"? Sprints are always fixed-length (scope is varied to fit the sprint). Two-week sprints are used by some, but nobody does 15 day (aka two weeks plus one day) sprints.