Joel Spolsky's Talk at Yale, Part 3 | Hacker News Reader

Joel Spolsky's Talk at Yale, Part 3

joelonsoftware.com

30 pointsjkush12 comments

I've got to say it, sorry - weak ending.

I was really looking forward to this after part one and two, which were really interesting. Part 3 makes a great point - the importance of being able to communicate in the written form - but could have been fleshed out a lot more.

Oh well.

I agree with you. I guess the whole series was simply a reflection on how a CS degree may or may not contribute to your success. And, oh yeah, come work for us 'cause we'll teach you what you REALLY need to know.

Yeah, Joel never seems to stop marketing - I wonder where he learned that!

I usually don't mind it in his articles, but at a speech to a university crowd, it comes off as a little arrogant.

Yeah, this series was really inspirational and interesting, and the first time he mentioned Fog Creek it was funny. But at the end, that was just tacky. I like his stuff, he's an intelligent guy, but he pushes his company/products into his insightful articles/speeches almost to a fault.

But then, I wont stop reading his articles and I guess that means I wont stop hearing about his company. Does that mean he's marketing successfully?

It's an old sales adage: Never stop selling, kid. Never stop selling.

And, he does it because it works. We all know what Fog Creek Software does, don't we? I betcha a number of people here have tried his bug tracking software, too.

Me. I'm currently using FogBugz at a company where I'm consulting. We haven't been using it for long, but it's nice enough. (In the past I've used Jira, Trac, Bugzilla). Overall favorite is Trac.

Those who can write properly own the future. What other ending do you need?

I liked the little anecdote of the professor who hated grades. He's not the only one. I know many professors who tear their hair out about student obsession with grades.

Actually, I thought the last part was the most interesting.

Yeah, I know most people on 'Hacker News' are either, a) the true academic "hacker" who are offended about Joel Spolsky's sacrilegious comments about Haskell and Prolog (he insulted automatic program proofs), b) the web 2.0 "hackers" who scoff at Joel's mundane bug-tracker software (he doesn't make social network software).

But what I have taken away from Joel's whole article and the classes and companies he had worked at is this: true CS people are misunderstood by the authorities of the world. On one hand, the authorities in the ivory tower expect us to prove that our programs work, but don't actually care how the program look or run in the real world. On the other hand, the authorities in the corporate board-room expect us to use standard toools and off-the-shelf solutions (always about the bottom-line), but don't actually care about how the program look or run in the real world.

So what is a hacker to do, but to do what every single true artist have done, to trailblaze his/her own path; and this is what Joel Spolsky/Steve Jobs/Brin&Page & Company exactly did.

His reason for not going to grad school is silly. There's more to CS research than proving correctness in a formal way.

I think his point was that it's tedious, and most graduate CS stuff requires a ton of work and time with diminishing benefit.

His description of "Algorithm Thinking" sounds so similar to a class at MIT I took nicknamed 6.xxx that it's spooky. It did, however, count towards my CS degree...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com