Why Fogbugz lost to Jira • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#191

Post by hravnx » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 3:17 AM UTC

chetanahuja wrote: post #159

spolsky wrote: post #121

Sorry, Prashant, you lost track of the plot of the story somewhere along the way. (creator of FogBugz, here) FogBugz won and Jira won, but they were playing different games. I wanted to make software development better for programmers. When I started creating Fog Creek Software in 2000 programmers were treated like typists. They were not paid very well (my starting salary was $33,000). There was almost no thought aro…

"When I started creating Fog Creek Software in 2000 programmers were treated like typists. They were not paid very well (my starting salary was $33,000)." OK someone has to call bullshit on this. I started as a lowly software engineer straight out of school at the same time. I started at 70K (east cost, not NY). You lost me right at the beginning there and any desire I might have had to go through your wall of text e…

It's fairly sad that the "script for the future" is (partly) being written by people who consider a mere 665 words a "wall of text" that is OK to comment on, but apparently too long to read.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#192

Post by dragonsh » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 3:19 AM UTC

I am still not sure if fogbugz lost. In general simple systems are always hard to built.

In general while doing a project with fixed date approach Jira issue tracker is indeed not inline with the source code. So there is a discrepancy between what is in issue tracker and whats in the source tree. Moreover developers cutting corners to meet the fixed date is a technical debt for future and Jira promotes it.

Fogbugz with its probabilistic approach is better matched with the actual source code, since even though developers over or under estimate, its probabilistic distribution analysis puts standard deviation and means put in front of their eyes to do better. So in general fogbugz approach results in better source tree and less technical debt.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#193

Post by hravnx » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 3:34 AM UTC

spolsky wrote: post #121

Sorry, Prashant, you lost track of the plot of the story somewhere along the way. (creator of FogBugz, here) FogBugz won and Jira won, but they were playing different games. I wanted to make software development better for programmers. When I started creating Fog Creek Software in 2000 programmers were treated like typists. They were not paid very well (my starting salary was $33,000). There was almost no thought aro…

"There was almost no thought around how software should be developed."

Really, Joel? So all the various software methodologies of the seventies and eighties, all the CASE tools of the nineties, Extreme Programming etc etc etc - all of this does somehow not count as "thought on how software should be developed"?!

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#194

Post by philliphaydon » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 3:35 AM UTC

Strom wrote: post #181

philliphaydon wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez so many replies to jira hate with. Oh buts how you configure it. Oh its this. It's that. Stop apologising for a shitty product. If a user find it hard. It's failed. End of story.

There is no universal solution. Every product will have users who find it hard to use. Speaking out about the fact that you find it manageable is valuable information and may show that there are more users who find it easy to use than not.

I agree. Things for some people, they don't work for others. But you cannot blame users and say "oh its how you configured it" "its good out of the box" etc.

If its failed for 1 user, its a shit product. If its a success for 1 user, it's a great product.

It's GOOD for a user to say they find it easy and why.

It's GOOD for a user to say they find it hard and why.

1 helps the user give a product a second chance by learning of his pitfalls.

1 helps the company improve their product to make it easier for more users.

My point is that apologists shouldn't come in here and blame users for a shitty product.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#195

Post by veidr » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 3:42 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #163

spolsky wrote: post #121

Sorry, Prashant, you lost track of the plot of the story somewhere along the way. (creator of FogBugz, here) FogBugz won and Jira won, but they were playing different games. I wanted to make software development better for programmers. When I started creating Fog Creek Software in 2000 programmers were treated like typists. They were not paid very well (my starting salary was $33,000). There was almost no thought aro…

You may have arrived at this view now, but it isn't believable that you never saw them as direct competition with you. For example http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/07/20.html makes it clear that you were adding features so that people wouldn't have to switch to "THE AUSTRALIANS". Which is a pretty clear reference to Atlassian.

I have at times used then-current versions of Fogbugz and JIRA over the past 15 years, and I remember the dichotomy pretty much like Joel lays it out.

I used Fogbugz on small teams, where we didn't have a dedicated person to do things like administer the bug tracker (and where the programmers chose their own issue tracker). When I saw JIRA, it would usually be because there were a lot of layers of management above the programming team (and a need for lots of reports and charts to go into presentation slides), or because the programmers were offshore and not known personally.

That is just one anecdata point, of course. But I think it was always pretty obvious that the two products had completely different philosophies -- and also that they still did compete to a good extent, because after all they are both issue trackers for software development (at least primarily; I guess JIRA also aspires to track issues building your airplane and whatnot).

If those were the only two bug trackers that existed, I myself would choose JIRA if I had somebody else to set up and run it, and Fobugz if I had to do it myself.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#196

Post by wpietri » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 3:58 AM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #172

wpietri wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you take money from investors, you have both a legal and a moral responsibility to them. It's important to remember that selling equity is really selling something, just like selling a product. You can't sell something, take somebody's money, and then just not deliver. What you are selling to investors, generally, is return on investment. The real problem comes in because founders and VCs have different understa…

No, assuming you're not an asshole, just want to reduce risk or make your own decisions in good faith, how can they force you to make a decision you normally wouldn't make?

To get the money from VCs, one has to sell them on the notion that the company will to scale until it can swallow the moon. Suppose I take their money and say, "Sorry, now I want to reduce risk! Too bad, suckers!" I'd say that makes me an asshole.

If you've taken a small amount of their money, then maybe they can't legally force you to take more risk than you think is wise. (They can, however, make sure you're unlikely to get money from anybody else, either now or in the future.) But if you've taken a B round or more, then a founder probably doesn't have control.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#197

Post by simoncion » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 3:59 AM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #194

Strom wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no universal solution. Every product will have users who find it hard to use. Speaking out about the fact that you find it manageable is valuable information and may show that there are more users who find it easy to use than not.

I agree. Things for some people, they don't work for others. But you cannot blame users and say "oh its how you configured it" "its good out of the box" etc. If its failed for 1 user, its a shit product. If its a success for 1 user, it's a great product. It's GOOD for a user to say they find it easy and why. It's GOOD for a user to say they find it hard and why. 1 helps the user give a product a second chance by lear…

> If its failed for 1 user, its a shit product.

That is a dangerous over-generalization.

Let's say -ferinstance- you have kick-ass, seriously best-at-what-it-does software that's only localized in Japanese, and a uniglot USian attempts to use it. They're gonna have a hard time. The software will very likely fail them, because they will be unable to understand anything they're being told by the software.

Does that make the software shit? No. No, it does not. The software is great, it "just" needs to be localized in order to be great for a wider swath of humanity.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#198

Post by radmuzom » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 4:22 AM UTC

hravnx wrote: post #193

spolsky wrote: post #121

Sorry, Prashant, you lost track of the plot of the story somewhere along the way. (creator of FogBugz, here) FogBugz won and Jira won, but they were playing different games. I wanted to make software development better for programmers. When I started creating Fog Creek Software in 2000 programmers were treated like typists. They were not paid very well (my starting salary was $33,000). There was almost no thought aro…

"There was almost no thought around how software should be developed." Really, Joel? So all the various software methodologies of the seventies and eighties, all the CASE tools of the nineties, Extreme Programming etc etc etc - all of this does somehow not count as "thought on how software should be developed"?!

He is not talking about software development methodologies, he is talking about the role of people (mostly developers) in the software development process.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#199

Post by julianz » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 4:25 AM UTC

mangeletti wrote: post #189

What about the name? He could have potentially left out the most important mistake Spolsky ever made, which is to name a product Fog Buzz. He might as well have named it Rain Smelt, or Lamp Shade. It sounds terrific once you use and like the product, but it doesn't sound remnisent of any kind of successful brand ever. Even the use of 2 words is a departure from the norm. Most of the big brands have 1-word names, and…

Possibly your most important mistake is not reading the name correctly. It's Fogbugz. One word.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#200

Post by julianz » Fri, Oct 02, 2015, 4:27 AM UTC

afsina wrote: post #8

Also Atlassian products are multi platform. Whereas fogbugz is windows only for the server side. That is a deal breaker for many.Additionally unlike Fogbugz Atlassian products are DB agnostic.

Huh? We've been running Fogbugz on a Debian server with a MySQL database for years and years. Fog Creek may encourage Windows now but it still runs on Linux just fine.