Joel Spolsky Must Be Stopped

Joel has been a hot topic of discussion in the blogosphere lately. It started with his Language Wars post where he ended a perfectly rational discussion about the risks of choosing between C#, Java, PHP, or Python with a highly incongruous paragraph that introduced Wasabi, the proprietary language they wrote for FogBugz development. It was so unusual and generated so much discussion that it prompted a response where Joel had to explain that he wasn’t kidding – Wasabi is real.

Along the way he disparaged Ruby and RoR for performance issues and for being too risky. Sure, it seemed strange to brag about taking on the risk of a proprietary domain-specific language at the end of a discussion about avoiding risk. That and the Ruby disrespect prompted several interesting posts (e.g. Joel, you have got to be kidding (which cites David Heinemeier Hansson’s Fear, Uncertain, and Doubt by Joel Spolsky), Has Joel Spolsky Jumped the Shark?, Joel On Ruby Performance, etc.)

But that’s not what’s got me frustrated with Joel.

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Joel has been a hot topic of discussion in the blogosphere lately. It started with his Language Wars post where he ended a perfectly rational discussion about the risks of...