Joel tears MS another new one
May 1st, 2008[ Software Development ]
Wow, I can’t say I disagree with much here but for a former employee Joel really goes after MS. Who cares if you agree, the writing is enough to make it worth the read. He takes a bit of a glancing pass at google as well. Make sure you stick around for the last paragraph. I will add that I agree for the most part, however, the problem they’re solving’s already been solved, the astronauts just want to compete for the over complicated version of the solution.
When I read David’s post on livemesh, I really did try to stay interested but it quickly sounded like, well exactly what Joel’s describing, something built by architecture astronauts that I would never contemplate using.
Bottom line, I know nothing about livemesh beyond what David’s written about but in any case ‘controversial Joel’ is good reading.
“Windows Live Mesh is not just a way to synchronize files. That’s just the sample app. It’s a whole goddamned architecture, with an API and developer tools and in insane diagram showing all the nifty layers of acronyms, and it seems like the chief astronauts at Microsoft literally expect this to be their gigantic platform in the sky which will take over when Windows becomes irrelevant on the desktop.”
“It’s Groove, rewritten from scratch, one more time. Ray Ozzie just can’t stop rewriting this damn app, again and again and again, and taking 5-7 years each time.
And the fact that customers never asked for this feature and none of the earlier versions really took off as huge platforms doesn’t stop him.”
“It sort of bothers me, intellectually, that there are these people running around acting like they’re building the next great thing who keep serving us the same exact TV dinner that I didn’t want on Sunday night, and I didn’t want it when you tried to serve it again Monday night, and you crunched it up and mixed in some cheese and I didn’t eat that Tuesday night, and here it is Wednesday and you’ve rebuilt the whole goddamn TV dinner industry from the ground up and you’re giving me 1955 salisbury steak that I just DON’T WANT.”