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Spolsky Stands Firm on Linux on the Desktop

Posted by michael on from the read-my-lips-no-new-rewrites dept.

erlando writes: "SoftwareMarketSolution is running an interview with Joel Spolsky (from JoelOnSoftware) in which he responds to this earlier thread here on Slashdot. In short: He defends his position and makes some interesting remarks on Linux and the desktop."

3 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What API changes? by Chang · · Score: 3, Informative

    DirectX
    IE5
    Windows Media Player
    Windows Installer
    Active Directory

    All of these modify, or extend the Win32 API under Win95 when installed.

  2. Re:doesn't like "ground-up rewrites," but - by erasmus_ · · Score: 3, Informative

    Right, because executing untrusted scripts is the core functionality of Outlook. And here I was thinking it was composing emails, dealing with contacts, and scheduling appointments. Joel is right, and you're not understanding his point.

    Outlook has a problem with attachments to email, which is probably actually less than 1% of the codebase of the product. Therefore he is right, and saying that rewriting everything in the program is the only way to fix it is wrong. Sure, let's redo the spellchecker, the datetime picker for the calendar, the user interface components - ONLY by rewriting all of those things will Outlook be secure!

    It only takes one bad line of code to crash everything.

    Yes, thanks. So should the solution be to rewrite that one line or the whole app? Hmmmmmm

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  3. No MS support, no USB by rlowe69 · · Score: 3, Informative

    No one uses the out-of-the-box version of Win95 anymore, do they?

    Two things about Win95:
    1. Microsoft no longer supports Windows 95.
    2. USB is not natively supported in the early versions of Win95 (and later versions are spotty, they get it right by Win98).

    So on that level, Joel's arguments are flawed. Less and less people will be testing on Win95 because MS doesn't support it any more. The WIN baseline now starts at Win98.

    Another thing: if you DO use Win95, do you test the off-the-CD version or the highly patched (practically Windows 98) version? Grey grey grey area, Joel.

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