Kinda a Big Announcement

The intro is about how some things change slowly. His transition paragraph is how things don't seem to get better. He then does his real topic launch by then identifying something that did change quickly, and did get better.

I've been reading Spolsky essays for 20 years, he really is incredibly talented. So much so that even today, you can reference some of his early essays on "commoditizing your complement" in the tech industry - and there is a better than average chance that the person you are speaking to will be familiar with Joel's essay on this topic.

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#5

Post by khazhoux » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

bfrog wrote: post #3

Is it just me or is the intro relating to COM a bit off the mark?

It resonated for me because 10 years ago I worked on a COM project (browser extension that had to support IE) and the total lack of information for that "pre-internet" technology meant I had to rely on very hard to find books. There was one book in particular that without it, the project would have failed. And that's what everything used to be like (well, more like before Internet, not necessarily before Stack Overflow).

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#6

Post by garettmd » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

Does it seem like "GRAND" in that last paragraph was a hint at what they're building for the data issues he mentioned in the second to last paragraph?

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#7

Post by thorwasdfasdf » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

bfrog wrote: post #3

Is it just me or is the intro relating to COM a bit off the mark?

not to us old farts, who get a great feeling of nostalgia when we read about those win32 APIesque topics.

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#8

Post by draw_down » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 6:21 PM UTC

Always liked Joel as a writer. I do not foresee this being a good thing though, except perhaps for owners/shareholders. I’m expecting revenue extraction, product stagnation (or worse), communities declining. Some of this seems like it has begun already, I would say I don’t use SO as a resource as often as earlier in its lifetime. Seems like these days the answer is as likely to come from a GitHub issue.

Anyway, congrats to the owners and shareholders I suppose.

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#9

Post by fennecfoxen » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

Stack Overflow destroyed a lot of its social capital and pissed off its own community in the wake of the Monica Cellio affair a little under 2 years ago. (This one was touched off by the Judaism Stack Exchange moderators asking questions about pronoun policy, but ended up with basically every community involved up in arms, including many in their LGBTQ+ community.)

One hopes the new owners will do a better job of managing community relations. It will be difficult for them to do worse.

Re: Kinda a Big Announcement

#10

Post by phorkyas82 » Wed, Jun 02, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

Still love that guy and his writing.

Went with my current company mostly because they dropped his name in the job description.

(Also: Went so heavily into table tennis that it always seems to me he's holding that table tennis racket a bit awkwardly or like a hobby player in that picture. But great hobby.)