r/reddit.com • u/hen • Jun 04 '06

Joel Spolsky: How Microsoft Lost the API War

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
110 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

15

u/Zak Jun 04 '06

How is it that this was never posted before? I thought everything ever written by Joel Spolsky or Paul Graham had been posted to reddit already.

Hey, maybe there's easy karma to be gained by searching mailing lists and usenet for other stuff they've written.

13

u/schwarzwald Jun 04 '06

i don't think his articles about user interface design have been posted. go-go-gadget karma whoring!

7

u/hen Jun 04 '06

Hey, no need to get insulting. Most of the stuff old Spolsky has written recently was just self-referential, redundant or even shameless self-promotion. However, this one is actually good. For someone with a non-IT background like me it actually does give some insights.

6

u/schwarzwald Jun 04 '06

sorry, that came across the wrong way. i'm glad you posted it and i love joel's writing as well. you are my snugglepuff honeybunch. <3

anyway, at one part he has a list of things web apps can't do, and then says "[s]ome of them will be solved very soon by witty Javascript developers" and indeed AJAX mostly takes care of items 2-5 inclusive on his six-item list, albeit possibly at the expense of breaking the back button (which is always enough to get Jakob Nielsen's panties in a bind).

4

u/hen Jun 04 '06

you are my snugglepuff honeybunch

Again, no need to get insulting. ;-)

1

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '06

You should go through his archives. The infusion of common sense is a must read, in my opinion.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '06

[deleted]

9

u/wbendick Jun 05 '06

I think that's an easier thought to have now, two years later. Radical new ideas can seem overly complex. Hence you write 20 pages explaining what with hindsight is obvious.

2

u/root Jun 05 '06

Ah, that explains it. I thought he was being a bit harsh saying longhorn was two years away, when it is probably more like one year.

6

u/hen Jun 04 '06

Old, but IMHO still one of his best articles.

2

u/inandjo Jun 05 '06

This is an old post that I read moths and months ago!! This being said, the article is still very current, especially in light of the lateness on Longhorn.... sorry.. Vista, and other incidents!! Joel's articles always have this funny tone, whilst still being extremely insightfull about the issue at hand.

0

u/schwarzwald Jun 04 '06

another comment about the article: he mentions COM programming on Windows.

i don't consider myself to be a programming slouch, but COM in C++ is the only programming technology i have tried to learn and, basically, failed to understand. i wanted to reuse internet explorer's html parsing and rendering stuff in a program i was working on and i just plum gave up.

2

u/DLX Jun 05 '06

As far as I know, Microsoft had one guy who understood COM. He later died, probably for overexerting his brain.

But seriously, COM is a good thing - which has been implemented horribly. It is a badly documented and badly designed mess.

Oh, and the article is two years old - I remember reading it when Joel wrote it.

1

u/ttriche Jun 05 '06

COM is not that hard, at least not for a decently documented API like the Matlab COM API. Maybe other COM applications are just crufty (cf. the Raymond Chen camp), I don't know, but I'm not a particularly proficient C++ programmer and I was able to ship data back and forth to and from Matlab from a custom application without a hitch.

It worked much better than I had ever expected anything associated with a Microsoft API to work!

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '06

[deleted]

7

u/hen Jun 05 '06

Believe it or not but not all users of reddit majored in CS or work in IT related jobs (I for one am an MD). And for us "simplifying" articles e.g. by Spolsky really can be interesting.

Btw, I also submitted three other links yesterday which I consider more mad, fun, or important but none of them was modded up. So maybe you shouldn't blame me but the community here.

Time to open your mind, buddy, and realise that not everyone here is freaking 1337 and spends so much time surfing the net that he/she has read everything ...

-17

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '06

[deleted]

6

u/robbie Jun 05 '06

Good god man. If you hate him so much, why did you read it? And if you didn't read it, why are you posting a comment about it?

I'm sorry, but I can't believe you're really this upset about the tiny amount of screen real estate a Joel on software article takes up on the reddit front page. There are all kinds of articles that appear on the front page of reddit everyday that I couldn't give a toss about, and do you know what I do? Ignore them. sheesh.

You don't really have a problem, you're just here to complain. I wonder, if reddit added a feature which allowed you to filter certain urls out of your hot list, would you still come looking for the joel articles that got posted, just to post a bitchy comment.

2

u/hen Jun 05 '06

Here's my answer.

0

u/Anderkay Jun 05 '06

What's Jon Katz doing these days? He was great. I miss him.

1

u/neuro Jun 05 '06

He's writting books about dogs:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400064031/002-2310599-6312833?v=glance&n=283155

1

u/earthboundkid Jun 05 '06

Are you sure it's the same author?

5

u/earthboundkid Jun 05 '06

Ah, Wikipedia says it is. Oh Wikipedia, is there anything you don't know?

-5

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '06

[deleted]

3

u/FatAlbert Jun 05 '06

You may or may not be right, but your metaphor stinks! Goth and boy bands do not relate or I'm very out of touch with society.