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Joel on software

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 3:56 pm
by alex.barylski
Not sure how I feel about the guy...sometimes he irritates me and others...not so much...I can't see he's ever amazed me or wow'ed me...but the following article on abstractions being...well...ummm...not so good...

I found the article interesting...despite being a *huge* advocate for forward thinking and abstraction...everything I do I try and further abstract...so it bugged me to read his cynicism's on abstraction...but there are a few valid thoughts...

In anycase...interesting read, incase you haven't read it already...

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ ... tions.html

Disscuss??? Comments, experiences, opinions, etc?

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 7:54 pm
by Charles256
i'm almost positive "he" is a she.

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 8:02 pm
by volka
I don't think so unless http://www.joelonsoftware.com/AboutMe.html is a cover-up ;)

I agree with the article. It's not against abstraction in general but you should keep the perspective.

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 8:03 pm
by Charles256
hum.must be thinking of another blog...odd... ; shrugs :

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 9:47 pm
by Ambush Commander
I learned about Joel from his "Absolute minimum every developer must know about Unicode" article. I'm not sure how much I learned from that article, but concerning this one...

...I did enjoy the analogy for TCP/IP.

Seriously though, I agree with what Joel is describing, although I'm still a little iffy about his motives: his strong belief that you need to be very familiar with the low level workings of a system before you work at a higher level. Maybe that's because I don't want to learn C++, but what he's describing is definitely true, and should definitely be factored into your decision making process before you use an abstraction.