Joel’s writings do make a lot of sense to me. Even though I dont agree 100% with him, the issues he comes up with are worthy of discussion - especially about the software startup ecosystem, and baiting his former employer M$.

On programming I think his record is a bit mixed.

Software is a field that does not impose physical limits on imagination, ideas and implementations of our concepts. In other words, dare to think different, or dare to stretch the envelope. Yet most companies/office-environments spend most of their time crimping this ability.

you seem to forgot a little Web 2.0 company called 37singals in Chicago. you know that little small creative team spawn Basecamp and other little web tools using RoR and as the matter of fact. The creator of RoR is on that team!

again, it shouldn’t matter where you are or what tool you use. if the tool that you use limited your creativity then simply use another tool. BTW, Microsoft does have some goods like .Net, Xbox360, Silverlight look promising, Office2007’s ribbon GUI and dare i say Windows. yes, Windows. It work fine for me since Win2000 and i have Vista Business on my desktop and laptop and Vista work just fine. Vista did what it suppose to do. i fail to see why i should care about tool.

i don’t get all these Mac/Linux fan boys worship their tools like the second coming of Jesus. Maybe Steve Job is the savior of the world or whatever.

I’ve seen this argument before: “Windows is a tool. Linux is a tool. Mac is a tool. Use the right tool for the right job.”

I agree. I totally agree. And yet, I totally disagree.

To draw an analogy: “Chicago is a place. Tokyo is a place. San Francisco is a place. Denver is a place. All of these places are more-or-less equivalent, except for certain parameters.” And that’s true.

But it’s completely wrong.

I find that being in Denver or San Francisco or Tokyo excites my creativity. Being in Chicago does not.

Different places feel different. They make you feel different. Downtown Chicago *feels* like stuffy corporate types in business suits. But I find that San Francisco or Tokyo or Denver *feel* inspiring. Places for new ideas. New York City *feels* like the melting pot of America. To me, NYC *feels* like this concept called America (as in, the US of A).

There’s a million little details that make a person like or dislike a place.

For me, a huge factor is something that may seem rather trivial: Chicago is built on a grid. All the roads are at right angles to each other. I can’t stand this. Really: I truly don’t want to live in Chicago simply because all the roads are at right angles to each other.

Contrast this with Denver or San Francisco: both of those cities have collisions between a N-S/E-W system of roads and a NE-SW/NW-NE system of roads. San Francisco has multiple such collisions. (Tokyo seems as though someone threw some spaghetti on the ground and said, “that’s the map”.)

This may seem like such a trivial thing, but I have no real desire to live in Chicago for this reason. I like to explore strange, new places, but every intersection in Chicago feels identical to the last.

By analogy, I think that there are a million little “peronality” reasons why people love Linux or Mac or Ruby or Python or whatever. I don’t live my life to be just a cog in the economic machine. I love technology and I want it to mean something to me. So the tools I use reflect upon my personality.

Good luck getting the next Google to start up in Chicago using C++ code running on Windows servers: Ain’t gonna happen.

Typical Mac/Linux fan boy view of the world. The FACT to the matter is us MS developers just don’t give a damn about the tool that we use. Windows, Mac or Linux are tool. A mean to the end. We use it to make money or get the job done. who else beside Mac/Linux fanboys keep spewing these kind of FUDs. Hey, i got a dedicated FreeBSD server that i used to run share hosting and i also have a Windows2003 for sharepoint. why the hell do i care about Windows, Mac or Linux? Would i get a cut of MS’s cash if i act like Apple fan boy? Is Steve Job = Jesus or something?

Mod +1 Peter and Bruce’s comments though.

I’ll have to check out Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn to see what they say about programming environments and productivity.

Have you read Peopleware? They provide some pretty conclusive evidence about the effects of giving developers a distraction-free, noise-free environment for doing hardcore development work.

Getting together in common rooms, etc. for a few hours a day doesn’t sound like a bad idea either. But it usually drives me crazy to be stuffed into a room or cubicle farm for 8-10 hours a day; headphones only go so far, then again I have Spidey-sense hearing.

At startups, once you’ve proven your worth (after 2-3 months or so), it seems they are usually small & cool enough to have much more flexible work environments, schedules, etc.

At bigger companies, they almost always have the wrong reasons for stuffing people in a room / cube farm:
a) belief workers will “goof off” if not in some kind of environment where they can be “monitored” (if you fear this, your company is screwed anyway and should probably just clean house)
b) potentially false belief that it will aid in cost savings. Peopleware does a pretty good job crunching the numbers — if devs are 200% more productive in a quiet environment, are you really saving money stuffing em in a cube farm or big common room?

Since then, I’ve worked in cubicles or romper rooms. My productivity has never quite recovered. I work from home when I need to solve a difficult problem, research, or design.

That being said, I like common areas where programmers can sit and work together. But I also need an area to which I can escape and have total silence and no interruptions.

As for BDUF, I think it depends on the kinds of projects you are working on. For a very UI-centric component (which includes most software these days), it makes more sense to design this iteratively. For some bits of software (like complex, multi-threaded internal operating systems components, or complex back-end components), BDUF can be critical. Even with BDUF, you need to assume that things will change.