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I hate to be the one to tell you that it already exists:
http://www.fogcreek.com/kiln/

Fwiw, FogBugz released Kiln Harmony that allows devs to use either git or hg.

http://blog.fogcreek.com/announcing-kiln-harmony-the-future-of-dvcs/

C++, Java, etc. express solutions to the big software problems we'll be solving over the next decade, and it is going to be even harder to express efficient solutions to those problems

I think you fail to understand how adaptable C and C++ is (not java). The strong point isn't how great it is at any given benchmark, but rather how good it is for solving a whole range of different problems. From low level bit banging, to heavy parallel transaction management (how many databases are written in C). Many of the C/C++ "problems" are really more reflections on the lack of standardized libraries for doing things. There are C/C++ libraries for doing everything you can imagine, but you don't have to use them. If your OS provides mmap and its 10x faster than doing read/write style ops then you have that choice. If you want to interface to lua, opencl, or even inline assembly, then you can do it with ease. Just try doing GPGPU programming in a those languages you list. If speed is an issue your application is going to fail, when your competitor figures out how to use a GPU to solve a problem at 10x the rate of a CPU, and your stuck two layers away from the hardware because its more convenient to do regex processing there than picking a high performance one (http://code.google.com/p/re2/) for C++.

The bottom line is that its rare to find a 100% C or C++ project these days. No one writes whole web apps with C++ CGI/bin files, rather using php/ruby/etc. But when you need to operate on a 100GB sparse matrix, you drop to something that can control the access patterns or utilize some hardware specific feature that gives a big performance boost. This is the problem I see with java programmers all the time, a lot of high performance computing is actually "just an exercise in caching", and when you can't control low level details like memory placement a lot of performance tends to evaporate. Even at the big web companies its not unusual to find C++ running some portion of the system where the language du jour failed.

BTW: Even Yahoo replaced their lisp

What is that?

Google VP Marissa Mayer: " People ask me a lot what it's like to be a woman at Google. I don't think of my experience that way. I'm a geek at Google."

what the hell is that? Now I see what they mean by Google 'perks'.

Joel also runs Fog Creek Software. Tell your boss you want this sort of environment http://www.fogcreek.com/about.html since Joel recommends it.

10-11 hour days can be done. I aim for 65 hours a week. They can't be done without extenuating circumstances though when you can just walk on over to the next shop and get the same pay for a standard 8 hour day. Update your resume. It might work out but I'd bet against.

    -CZ

Thank god for free labor.

Fog Creek Internships

Not really... Probably a deal in NYC, but he has actually railed against unpaid internships in his articles.

Hi,

Having just gone through replacing our old bug tracker, Arctic, we choose to replace it with FogBugz. I looked at about every bug tracker out there, and for our needs FogBugz was the best fit. It has a Tracker, WIKI, and Forums built in and supports importing bugs/wikis from some of the more well known alternatives. It also has an XML based API which we have found very usefull and well documented. I would defiantly recommend checking them out, they have a free 45 day trial.

http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/

Its great, its simple, it also cost a bit of money, but its worth every cent.

Another vote for CoPilot. While not fully web based (there is a small client), it's about as transparent as it gets, free for the occasional use, and developed by http://www.fogcreek.com/, a company that imho gets it right.

This isn't really a troll. It may well be an excellent idea to just say fuck it and start coding without caring whether you are doing it wrong or whatever. Just throw some code together that roughly does the first or next few things it needs to do, compile it (if necessary), and debug it just barely enough for it to produce more or less desirable results. Then forget about it until the next day.

Next day, either refactor what you did the day before, or just keep moving crazily forward. Eventually you will refactor it into something reasonable, and you will have achieved forward movement.

Don't worry, nobody's watching. Like the man said:
Plan to throw one away. You will anyway.

Can't seem to find the blog/article, but thought Carmack posted about being a game developer was akin to wearing different types of hats:
- architect (designing)
- engineering (building the program)
- scientist (diagnosing bugs)

I know this topic has been discussed back in 2004...
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=182392

As a software development *student*, you should be focusing more on the concepts, on engineering problem solving, and on reasoning skills than on the specific technologies.

As a software engineering professional, I learn the tools that I need to effectively do my job. I learn things that look interesting and applicable to whatever it is I am doing. Thus, I work with the GWT and with AJAX because I decided that's what I needed in order to tackle a problem we were having. As a senior engineer who is engaged in the hiring process, I care more about that you can think than that you happen to have seen and worked with twelve dozen technologies by the time you graduated. As a job posting I saw recently says:

We do not hire based on a specific list of buzzwords, technologies, or popular acronyms on your resume. Today we happen to use Wasabi, JavaScript, xhtml and CSS, and C++ to build FogBugz, but Python and .NET are likely to be important in the future. We use C++ and Objective C for Copilot. We have server systems in C# and legacy code in VBScript. Tomorrow we may be using something different. Whatever technologies, languages, or development environments you've been using, we expect you have mastered them in depth, and we expect that you will be able to master any technology, language, or development environment that we need in the future.

You can't predict it and the specific tools will change tomorrow, so as a student I would generally say that learning it--unless it is for a specific project or class of projects, or because it contains a concept or problem solving idea that you want to learn--is a waste of time. I learned R back in school because it was more efficient than using Minitab for multivariate statistics and for statistical modeling, not because it was out there and I needed to put it on my resume. On the latter point, I still think learning Prolog and LISP were extremely valuable despite that I never use them professionally and will probably never use them professionally.

Incidentally, if you are a good engineer, the language doesn't matter. If you are a bad engineer, the language still doesn't matter. *Problem solving* counts for more in the long run than bullet points.

if they want to attract and retain six-sigma hacker types, they better look at companies who do like Fog Creek.

Really, if you're going to criticize Spolsky, it should be for his attempted cover-up of the McKinstry suicide note, rather than for any deficiencies in his mediocre software.

I guess that was a good troll, because it made it to +5, but it seems kind of weak to me.

One product? Offhand, I can name three separate products which FogCreek ships.

Doubly so because you're comparing it to AutoDesk, which has ... well, there's AutoCAD. I don't know any others. According to the Wikipedia, the first non-AutoCAD product of mention is Revit, which they bought in 2002, after the company was 20 years old.

FogCreek is only 8 years old. Even AutoDesk wasn't paying $133 million for other companies when they were only 8 years old.

I'm not seeing anything particularly useful in "The Autodesk File". Could you point out what parts of it might be of use to us budding CEOs? I like the parts about how they're stocking up on 8" floppy disks and looking at porting to C for the 8086 and 68000. It's a regular blast from the past, but I don't see anything here that's very useful in building my own company.

I guess that was a good troll, because it made it to +5, but it seems kind of weak to me.

One product? Offhand, I can name three separate products which FogCreek ships.

Doubly so because you're comparing it to AutoDesk, which has ... well, there's AutoCAD. I don't know any others. According to the Wikipedia, the first non-AutoCAD product of mention is Revit, which they bought in 2002, after the company was 20 years old.

FogCreek is only 8 years old. Even AutoDesk wasn't paying $133 million for other companies when they were only 8 years old.

I'm not seeing anything particularly useful in "The Autodesk File". Could you point out what parts of it might be of use to us budding CEOs? I like the parts about how they're stocking up on 8" floppy disks and looking at porting to C for the 8086 and 68000. It's a regular blast from the past, but I don't see anything here that's very useful in building my own company.

And from the unpaid, or underpaid, work of interns

Yes, all they got was:

• Weekly stipend of $750
• Free housing in an area dorm (usually with private rooms)
• Free gym membership
• Free MetroCard (gets you on any bus or subway in New York)
• Free soft drinks
• Free lunches
• Free weekly social events. 2005 events included attending a Yankees game, a boat trip around Manhattan, walking tours, museum trips, two Broadway shows, a movie opening, and parties.

Doesn't seem that shabby...

I've killed some time on this since it's a pretty interesting idea. It turns out there are plenty outside the D and F range. It does seem to like pages with a single Flash object and not much else, so that's bad. It also makes some pretty arbitrary decisions which don't mean squat to many sites. There are some sites that get enough traffic that speed is a factor but not so much that a content delivery network is really necessary, for example.

I skipped the actual link and score on sites that are pretty much just representative of the sites around them. I wanted to include them by name, though, to show where they fall. I've stuck mostly to main index pages, and I've noted where I've gone deeper.

A: Google (99%), Altavista main page (98%), Altavista Babelfish (90%) (including upon doing a translation from English to French), Craigslist (96%), Pricewatch (93%), Slackware Linux, OpenBSD, Led Zeppelin site at Atlantic (100%), supremecommander.com, w3m web browser site (96%)

B: Apache.org (87%), the lighttpd web server (84%), Google Maps, which also got a C once (84% in most cases), Perlmonks (84%), Dragonfly BSD (85%), Butthole Surfers band page (81%), 37 Signals

C: One Laptop Per Child,, ESR's homepage, the Open Source Initiative (78%), Google News (73%), Lucid CMS (74%), Perl.org (75%), lucasfilm.com, Charred Dirt game

D: gnu.org, The Register, A9 (66%), kernel.org, Akamai (64%), kuro5hin.org, freshmeat.net, linuxcd.org, Movable Type (61%), Postnuke, blogster.com, Joel on Software (67%), Fog Creek Software, metallica.com, gaspowered.com, Scorched 3D (68%), id software (64%), ISBN.nu book search

F: MS IIS (49%), microsoft.com, msn.com, linux.com, fsf.org, discovery.com, newegg.com, rackspace.com, the Simtel archive (26%), CNet Download (29%), Adobe (58%), savvis.com, mtv.com, sun.com, pclinuxos.com, freebsd.org, phpnuke.org, use.perl.org, ruby-lang.org, python.org, java.com, Rolling Stones band page (56%), powellsbooks.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, getfirefox.com

My site for my company (96%) gets an A (no, I'm not going to get it slashdotted) which is pretty simple but has a pic and some Javascript on it. Several sites I have done or have helped design with someone else get C or D ratings.

When we started to grow and get more customers, we needed a new system to handle everything from bugs, support requests and personal TODO lists. We searched and evaluated allot of these systems, we finaly settled for Fogbugz, the combination of features/price was right.

http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/

Its not an PHP/MySQL solution, but that was not an important parameter for us.

Joel owns Fog Creek Software and their jobs page is here. Alternatively there's another small company that has similar fantastical working conditions. Both, however, are reputedly hard to get into. If only more companies thought that way. Even free food/drinks is a big step in the right direction that doesn't cost a lot.

Well, as we all know, Java is not fault tolerant and should not be used for the aircraft navigation or air traffic control.

It's 2006. I just bought two 120 GB hard drives for $49.99 each--that's the out-the-door price, no rebates; and not crap, these are 5-year-warranted Seagates. Who worries about the file size of an office document? I know, I know, not everyone has huge hard drives and broadband, but do you really think people are going to shell out big bucks so a 40k Word document turns out to be 31k because it's OMGXML? It's 2006, the ony files people want to make smaller are movies.

XPS will not matter until everyone has the new Office and/or Vista. No one cares about making PDFs because everyone they share documents with already has Word and can read native .doc's. (See journal link below.)

And blogging? Please. The reason HTML-form-based (TEXTAREA) blogging took off and products like City Desk didn't is because people don't want to have to fire up a binary app to make a web page.

The fact is, Office's biggest competitor is now... old versions of Office! (Why do you think they make those 'dinosaur' ads?) Microsoft now faces the same problems that all their competitors have faced for years.

>> You'll be able to mix-n-match C# code.

Actually you can. The IDE might not support it though.
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/dotnetquestions/defaul t.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=471

I've found CityDesk to be very easy to use. You run the application on your PC (Windows only). It generates your website, and you just upload it. It has a WYSIWYG editor, although it's a little weak. There's a fully functional free version to try.

FogBugz is great. Sure, it's a commercial system that you have to pay for, but it is easy to install, simple to use, has a very clean user interface and even has a philosophy. Believe it or not, the last point is the most important. The folks behind FogBugz seem to work really hard to adhere to the KISS pricipal and produce a superior product.

If you compare them to workhorses like Bugzilla, Fogbugz seems very minimalistic, but it turns out to actually be more useful that way. The guy behind the folks behind Fogbugz, Joel Spolsky, has lots of interesting things to say about the design of Fogbugz that are just good reading for ANY CS/IT person to even if you don't buy his product.

Another product that I tried out was scarab, which was appealing since it was a Java J2EE application from the same folks who brough us subversion. From a CS point of view, scarab is an interesting example of how to use turbine. Unfortunately, scarab is hard to install and configure.

Although the version of scarab that I tested was still a beta product that might not be quite so hard to use out of the box any more, it is interesting to compare it to FogBugz. Scarab had the kitchen sink approach that is so configurable that it could be set up to be every bit as complicated as Bugzilla or as simple as FogBugz. However this flexibility made it a nightmare to configure and administer. While you could, conceivably set it up like FogBugz, it would be hard to make it work exactly the same way and wouldn't provide the same ease of use... just the same limitations with an added level of complexity.

To summarize less is more... in quality and price this time ;)

There is a reason this hasn't been done before and that is security. With complete access to the phone ringer control malicious content could run wild. Check out the original argument by Joel Spolsky here.

Ahh, found this link

I liked these posts:

Why are we arguing about this? Isn't what we really want a source code editor that understands the semantics behind the source text? Why waste bytes on tabs and/or spaces when the editor could figure out how to display code based simply on the placement of curly braces?

and

The main problem with using tabs occurs when statements are spread across more than one line (to horizontally align parameters in long function calls, etc.). If someone views the code with a different tab width setting, the horizontal alignment is undone.

One solution is to use tabs for the block indentation, and then use spaces for any additional indentation that is internal to the block. That way, each programmer can have his own preference for how wide each indent level should be, without messing up any of the line-stuff-up readibility efforts.

I think there are many apps that do exactly what you described.

Here is one I know of:

http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/index.html/

Joel Spolsky was, among other things, PM on Excel pre Office 95. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog00000000 07.html and http://discuss.fogcreek.com/askjoel/default.asp?cm d=show&ixPost=4201 might be of interest.

In practice, for most compilers on Intel hardware the code

int tmp;
tmp = *b;
*b = *a;
*a = tmp;

will compile into a single XCHG instruction. However, most compilers will not figure out the equivalent

b ^= a;
a ^= b;
b ^= a;

Ham Fisted
Saturday, August 21, 2004

Our small but growing startup is using Fogbugz , an excellent bug tracking tool. It is integrated with our subversion repository, and I have nothing but high praise for its ease of use and feature set.

Fogbugz easily solves this dilemma. To restate, the same bug is present in multiple revisions, and it must be fixed in each one.

One bug is created describing the problem. The bug's is marked as present in one of the revisions, and the text of the bug includes which branches/revisions it is present in. As each revision/branch is fixed, the bug is changed in the 'fix-for' to the next revision, and a comment added with info on the remaining branches to be fixed.

I would suggest to the Fogbugz development team (headed by Joel Spolsky ) that it is possible to handle this even better by allowing multiple revisions to be selected for the 'FixFor' pulldown, and then thereafter allow these to be unchecked or added to as need be.

Otherwise, the existing Fogbugz will work just fine. I can't speak to Bugzilla, but it might have a technique as well.

Have you ever heard of FogBugz? It solves many of the appearance and usability problems you were talking about. I have used it previously, and it worked very well for my company. It is also very easy on the eyes and has a clean interface (though it is not free). I am curious how this tool compares to Bugzilla since my experience with it is extremely limited. Is the ease-of-use of FogBugz worth the price? Are there major features missing here that Bugzilla lacks?

I have had grandiose ideas to build the next "killer app" for 25 years. I have over-engineered all sorts of wacky ideas that never turned into much. I wanted the 200% growth rate per month or whatever took Gates and Ellison to the top.

Then I struck onto the formula that pays me a couple hundred thousand a year, is helping to fund well-paid jobs for people I have hired, and is growing at a 30% per year rate. Not rocket surgery, just a real simple formula that pays really well (from my perspective), and looks like it will work for some time.

Pick a simple idea (almost brain-dead idea) that no one is doing very well, but that solves a specific business problem. Something that can be coded in 200 hours or less. Something with about 5000 - 50,000 prospective buyers (not hundreds of millions, not tens). Build your software product simple, but well. One feature really well.

If the idea doesn't seem stupid to you, the smart geek, then it's not simple enough. It should be one of those "yawn, anyone can do this" idea. The key is, anyone can do it, no one IS doing it. If the idea doesn't seem stupidly simple, simplify it more.

Practically give away the first one. Market the hell out of it. Aim for ten reference sites (at *give-away* prices), while you improve the product (based on client feedback).

It's amazing when you share this process with your prospect, how open they are to the idea! "We are just getting into the business, and we are investing in market share, practically giving away the first few, just to get customer feedback and references". Everyone wants a freebie, and wants to somehow be part of a successful up-start.

We charged "one dollar" to one client, "just so we can call you a customer". People will want to put it in "next year's budget" - we give it to them this year (for $1), under the "gentleman's agreement" that it will be budgeted next year, and purchased if it's any good. Allow your marketing person total freedom in pricing the first ten - incented only on how fast he can get ten "sold". The key is reference-able accounts.

After ten, price it "to sell" initially (in the under $5000 price range, more like $2000 or $3000 annual fee - you know.. license + installation + annual maintenance). You can raise your prices later, when you have thousands of coder-hours into it. Explain that you're in it for the long haul and plan to expand the solution as others buy.

Hire a good marketing person and build your base. Once you have ten people at give-away prices, the next ten are "easy" at $6K one-time or 3K annual prices. The next 50 are real easy.

Soon you have 300+ customers at $3K+ annual. There's your first million (annual).

Rinse, Repeat.

No you won't be on the cover of Business Week anytime soon, but you'll get out of the "dream world" of building the next Google, and get into the fun world of making a few bucks, providing jobs for other people, and having fun when you want to. I love knowing that our team is making some good bucks. 25% of my small company (more than 10, less than 20 people) are making 6-figures per year, and they are allowing me to do fairly well, too. 6-figures in middle America isn't bad scratch. No, they're not Microsoft Millionaires, but they aren't complaining either.

It worked for me. It's bullet #3 in the infamous formula:
1. blah blah
2. blah blah
3. ???
4. Profit!

No genius here.. but I'd be glad to answer any publicly posted questions on this.

He jumped out of airplanes for the IDF, wrote the spec for VBA while he was the project manager for Excel in the early nineties, started http://www.fogcreek.com/ and made an assload of money.

You can read the rest of his resume here: http://joel.spolsky.com/resume.htm

I've never actualy used it, but the first thing that came to mind was CityDesk for Windows.

I believe FogBugz is exactly what you need.

Uh, hasn't friendster had a lot of performance problems over the past few years?

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default .asp?cmd=show&ixPost=108070

http://www.sickdoggy.com/archives/000372.html

http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/entry/3341461 825857782/

http://bbs.fuckedcompany.com/index.cgi?okay=get_to pic&topic_id=1761473

Subjective reasoning is not evidence. Sorry, try again.

The reality of what tends to happen is that very few people ever actually read the source code of OS products, much less modify it. And if the bug happens to get past the original developers, there is very little chance that a stranger to the code will find it. Thus we come back to the traditional model of reporting "I'm having this problem" and the developers responding, "Sorry, that's a bug. We'll fix it when we get a chance." (Actually, developers are rarely that polite, but you get the idea.)

Reference:
http://www.neilgunton.com/open_source_myths/#under _the_hood
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default .asp?cmd=show&ixPost=139833
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/security/2004/09/16/op en_source_security_myths.html

Citydesk by the company of software engineering guru Joel Spolsky, would be an excellent choice if you are a) running Windows b) willing to spend a little money.

It's not a comparative but it's a nice read http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/WhyFogBugzWorks.ht ml

Does anyone have a good comparison of Bugzilla and Fog Creek Bugz?

Not sure what your requirements are (one issue per month but MT is "too simple"?) but CityDesk is one way to go. Non-free Windows-only binary but it's great software and you don't need anything on the server except FTP. Free trial version, $299 to buy. Sounds expensive until you consider the cost of training. With CityDesk it's "Sit here, type into this thing that looks a lot like Word, and click 'pubish'."

Take a look at Fog Creek Software's FogBugz. Its usage paradigm is a little different than bugzilla, but a lot of people swear by it. It's well supported and designed to work on Windows, so it shouldn't be too much of a headache to get running.

Take a look at Fog Creek Software's FogBugz. Its usage paradigm is a little different than bugzilla, but a lot of people swear by it. It's well supported and designed to work on Windows, so it shouldn't be too much of a headache to get running.

I'm not a hardcore Fogbugz user, but I've been involved with a few projects that had lightweight use of it, and I think it is quite nice. nice. It runs on Unix/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

It is not free as in beer. But it is quite reasonably priced imho. There's a free trial of course.

Check out their pages on How Fogbugz Works and Why Fogbugz Works

It's from Joel Splosky, writer of the JoelOnSoftware blog.

I'm not a hardcore Fogbugz user, but I've been involved with a few projects that had lightweight use of it, and I think it is quite nice. nice. It runs on Unix/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

It is not free as in beer. But it is quite reasonably priced imho. There's a free trial of course.

Check out their pages on How Fogbugz Works and Why Fogbugz Works

It's from Joel Splosky, writer of the JoelOnSoftware blog.

I'm not a hardcore Fogbugz user, but I've been involved with a few projects that had lightweight use of it, and I think it is quite nice. nice. It runs on Unix/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

It is not free as in beer. But it is quite reasonably priced imho. There's a free trial of course.

Check out their pages on How Fogbugz Works and Why Fogbugz Works

It's from Joel Splosky, writer of the JoelOnSoftware blog.

I'm not a hardcore Fogbugz user, but I've been involved with a few projects that had lightweight use of it, and I think it is quite nice. nice. It runs on Unix/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

It is not free as in beer. But it is quite reasonably priced imho. There's a free trial of course.

Check out their pages on How Fogbugz Works and Why Fogbugz Works

It's from Joel Splosky, writer of the JoelOnSoftware blog.

I'm not a hardcore Fogbugz user, but I've been involved with a few projects that had lightweight use of it, and I think it is quite nice. nice. It runs on Unix/Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

It is not free as in beer. But it is quite reasonably priced imho. There's a free trial of course.

Check out their pages on How Fogbugz Works and Why Fogbugz Works

It's from Joel Splosky, writer of the JoelOnSoftware blog.

Paul Graham is brilliant and I'm sure lisp was great for him and his team, but I think most of the productivity of lisp came from the fact that it's garbage collected. I don't see any reason why a lisp programmer today would have a productivity advantage over a C# or Java programmer (and yes, I know lisp.)