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Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it.
joelonsoftware.com
7-year old article, although that doesn't invalidate it. I think what does is that web development (particularly using frameworks) is much more tractable and probably more lightweight than creating an office suite or operating system.
I thought it was surprisingly relevant today; especially because it was written during the sobering post-dot-com rush. A lot of those lessons need to be remembered. You're right that a lot of his points are more related to consumer software, but he does have a few gems in there about web development, too, like his points about "Overhype syndrome" and the myth of "Internet Time."
7-year old article, although that doesn't invalidate it. I think what does is that web development (particularly using frameworks) is much more tractable and probably more lightweight than creating an office suite or operating system.
7-year old article, although that doesn't invalidate it. I think what does is that web development (particularly using frameworks) is much more tractable and probably more lightweight than creating an office suite or operating system.
I don't have any experience with Fog Creek products but their software should be 70-80% good by now if what he says is true.
Isn't it a bit ironic that Lotus Notes is given as an example to good software? I haven't met someone who doesn't hate it.
When I built the first version of the Ambient Clock (http://ambientclock.com), I groveled through the vagaries of iCal implementations. It was a nightmare.
I breathed a sigh of relief when we decided to use GData: a nice, clean API. But what bit me next was the USER data that was in there. Weirdly formatted, strange timezones, oddball recurrences and other stuff. The nice, clean API can only hide you from so much.
My point is that it is hard to write software that deals with human-generated content, in some structured way. As soon as you hit actual people, you can assume that they'll do things differently than expected: using semicolons rather than commas to break up bands, using a different DATE format when specifying things...
I believe Joel's definition of 'good software' is software that has learned to deal. And so can be used in a vast number of situations, by a vast number of people.