That's kind of self-limiting: if you leave you wireless network unprotected and people use it for doing something illegal, you are likely going to be in trouble in some form. First, the presumption will be that you are the criminal. Even if you can prove that it wasn't you, you may still be help responsible for your lack of security. And I doubt this is going to be any different in the US or Italy; it's only that in Italy, this sort of thing requires a law, while in the US, it can be introduced through case law.
Let me ask another question, is asp.net superior to jsp ? No ? Then is it "jsp" itself you're putting down or the people marketing it?
I have no opinion on which of the two systems is better; I just pointed out that Java is falling behind ASP.NET, so it doesn't look like it's the future.
And Java is only "portable" to the degree that it limits the degree to which you can access platform-specific features." - omfg.. that makes next to no sense
I'm sorry it makes no sense to you; if you actually were in the business of writing high quality cross platform software, it would.
NO [Java is] not an open standard, but it IS portable.
Good that you acknowledge it. Now, you may believe that a proprietary standard is a good standard, but I disagree.
I work with both java and.net developers on a daily basis,
Well, with people like you in this industry, it's no wonder that software quality is so awful.
First, Cryptography is hard. Even professional cryptographers with decades of experience still get it wrong -- often. Considering as this guy has essentially no previous experience (he's an EE professor), it's already near certain that he's dead wrong.
He is doing cryptography in the quantum cryptography sense--a secure, non-interceptable channel--not in the algorithmic cryptography sense. He is well-qualified to talk about the kinds of systems he is talking about.
Second, he doesn't provide "absolutely secure" communications. He provides non-interceptable communications. He's totally ignoring authentication, non-repudiation, man-in-the-middle attacks, and half a dozen other very important problems. (It's also not a cipher, but we'll ignore that slip.)
Again, he isn't trying to do any of those things; he is proposing a way of creating a physically secure channel, in the same sense that quantum cryptography is.
And to top it all off, he's depending on the precise values of voltage and current,
Wrong again. He is proposing a system in which resistances are altered in steps. That's no different and no more analog than any other digital system.
This is such bad research that I can't wait until Bruce Schneier get ahold of this.
Unless Schneier is an expert on electronics, Schneier isn't qualified to say anything about this.
Yes, this guy's system probably doesn't work. But, really, your response is even dumber than his proposal.
I agree: languages/environments like.NET are the future: they are easier to develop for, prevent silly programming mistakes, and help with security.
But this is nothing specific about.NET; many languages have that property. Microsoft deserves no credit for the technologies in.NET or VisualStudio, since those technologies are 20 years old and weren't invented at Microsoft.
Still, where does that leave open source and free software? We need to discard the user environment and applications written in C and C++; those languages are obsolete for mainstream software development and they are holding back FOSS (the kernel should eventually be discarded and replaced as well, but we can take a little more time for that).
I don't know what language should replace it. Mono would be the obvious candidate, but the fact that it is based on a Microsoft language makes it unattractive to many people. Java is definitely not the answer--it is riddled with technical problems and it is proprietary. Objective-C inherits too many of C/C++'s flaws to be much of an improvement.
The best thing to do might be to come up with a derivative of C that would feel quite familiar to C/C++ programmers, but add garbage collection and runtime safety. It should also probably be batch compiled, since the bloat associated with the JVM and CLR runtimes is unacceptable to many people.
"Compared to its initial hype and promise, Java has been a dismal failure." - You would need to quantify these constructs, but thats hardly going to happen, now isnt it?
That's easy to quantify: Java achieved near 0% of the dynamic web content market, and it achieved near 0% of the desktop application market, both areas where Sun was boasting that they were going to take over leadership from Microsoft (and people like me were supporting and cheering them on). The only area where Java has achieved any significant market share is in dynamic web services, but there Java has already fallen behind ASP.NET. So, in two out of its three target markets, Java has failed completely, and in the third, it's falling behind.
A hell of alot Java promised to be an open standard, a platform for high quality cross platform applications. - And it is. My java apps _are_ portable across systems, even my enterprise application is..
Java is not an open standard. And Java is only "portable" to the degree that it limits the degree to which you can access platform-specific features. That's not a good way of achieving cross-platform capabilities, it's a good way for driving away developers and it's the reason why Java failed in so many areas. Enterprise developers have the least need for high-quality platform integration, which is why Java is still hanging on to life in that area.
Dont MAKE me spank your C#.net.win32 microsoft visual c++ runtime exception throwing [rant continues]
I don't use Microsoft development tools or environments, and I rarely use Windows at all. And I don't recommend any specific alternative to Java (there are plenty, take your pick).
All I'm saying is that people like you are making false statements about Java. Java is a commercial failure compared to its initial hype, it has deep technical flaws, and it is clearly not the future.
Im a problem solver, ill pick the best tool for the job, but fanboi's.. fanboi's must die..
You're not a problem solver, you are a Java fanboi. Do us all a favor, take your own advice, and jump of a bridge.
First of all, OpenOffice 1.x is quite robust, mature, and reliable, with some known limitations, in particular in MS compatibility. I have seen some OpenOffice 2.0 bugs (mostly related to MS import), but 2.0 has a lot of improvements that make it worth living with the occasional bugs. Overall, OpenOffice is no different in terms of bugginess from most other large commercial desktop packages.
Is Microsoft Office faster and smaller than OpenOffice? Perhaps, but that's really not relevant. Office suites aren't in a pissing contest for speed or size. Software engineering involves a lot of tradeoffs and making an office suite faster than it needs to be is a waste of time and poor engineering practice. Also, OpenOffice solves a harder problem: it needs a cross-platform codebase (Microsoft just develops largely separate versions) and it needs to maintain compatibility with Microsoft Office.
Now, who is responsible for what OpenOffice is? OpenOffice was originally developed as a closed source piece of software. Much of the code is still that original code. Many of the decisions that are causing problems are still the decisions made back then. And development continues with developers supported by big companies. So, it is wrong to place the blame for OpenOffice's problems on open source. I think overall, open source has greatly contributed to OpenOffice and OpenOffice would be dead by now if it had remained closed source. On the other hand, without the initial proprietary effort, OpenOffice almost certainly wouldn't be as mature as it is.
Brown has some kind of bizarre model of open source in mind where it's only open source if a large portion of individual users contribute. But that's wrong. Open source is a licensing model that ensures access to source code, nothing more and nothing less, and OpenOffice fulfills that. Furthermore, in the case of an office suite, the "users" are big companies: when IBM wants to ship OpenOffice, IBM is the user, and IBM contributes (they happen to do so with software, donations and developers). And it is not necessary, and has never been the case, that a larger percentage of the user base contribute; a big user base is useful for an open source project even if most of the users are not developers. Finally, open source development has never been hugely efficient: open source projects usually take much longer to complete in real time than comparable proprietary projects; but that has never been a problem, and I don't see why it should be a problem now.
Overall, Brown is just confused: about software development, about engineering, and about open source. Maybe Brown should stick to commenting about things he knows something about.
(As for Brown's "most irritating bugs", I would classify them as WONT-FIX and NOT-A-BUG. If those are the biggest problems he has with OpenOffice, then OpenOffice is doing well.)
Sorry clown, Java is the top language/platform in new engineering positions right now. And it continues to grow.
As someone else pointed out already, ASP.NET has already overtaken Java for web development. For dynamic content, Java has been almost completely replaced by Flash and dynamic HTML. And for desktop applications, Java is non-existent in the real world.
Wake up: Java is history. Compared to its initial hype and promise, Java has been a dismal failure. The question you should be asking is: "who the hell uses Java these days". Java promised to be an open standard, a platform for high quality cross platform applications. Instead it's become the new Pascal and the new Cobol (only less successful).
And as for porting to Linux, Java is one of the worst choices for that: it's proprietary, closed source, and single-vendor.
Just imagine how much more effective of a deterrent it would be if we simply guillotine those music fans who dare post song lyrics on the Internet! Off with their heads, I say!
I hope SVG will get widely adopted (at least the basic profile) and replace Flash. I think there is a good chance that it will succeed because there is a need for it that none of the alternatives address well. Technically, I think it's at the threshold--there are multiple implementations, and tools and editors are increasingly supporting it.
However, if SVG were to fail, it would make the argument that there are too many web standards coming out even stronger.
We have barely scratched the surface of what is possible with the current generations of HTML, JavaScript, and SVG. The two areas where a little bit of standardization would be nice would be in support for drag-and-drop (for simplifying uploads) and rich text editing. Other than that, these people should just give it a rest and let us digest the current set of technologies.
Oh and BTW, fork() and the unix process model sucks as a parallellism primitive. I love Win32 threads and io completion ports:/
I see: you indeed are a future Windows programmer, and you are ready to produce the same bloated and flaky software that your predecessors produce.
(FWIW, you don't have to use fork for parallelism on UNIX; UNIX systems have always had better threads than Windows, it's just that UNIX programmers have the good sense not to use threads if they can help it.)
AJAX will probably be abused. In particular, lots of desktop developers will see it as the technology that finally enables them to force their lousy desktop apps on web users. That's abusing the technology.
But AJAX does let us do things that were messy or impossible before. Google's use of AJAX has been pretty good: it's being used for live updates of in-page information, for scrolling of large maps (with a "bookmark this" feature), and intuitive customization of the home page.
So, AJAX most sucks, but web sites in general mostly suck: people use HTML, DHTML, Flash, JavaScript and Java inappropriately, too. That shouldn't stop us from making new technologies available and for the people who use them carefully to actually use them.
I'm trying to find where a reasonable person (or hell, even an unreasonable one) would come to the conclusion that my statement presumes that his advice works 100% of the time, and I just can't see it, so congrats - nice troll.
I was objecting to your statement that Joel "educate[s] interested and intelligent people about the software development process". The term "software development process" refers to a well-defined body of knowledge and skills, and Joel doesn't educate people about it (but he does write an entertaining blog).
his columns are shameless advertising
No, what I consider "shameless self-promotion" is hiring a documentary film-maker to film interns working on a software development project at your company and then selling the resulting DVDs.
Joel Spolsky and his eloquent Extreme Programming critiques!
Indeed. The quickest way to join the ranks of highly-paid self-proclaimed computer gurus is to pick a fight with the best of them, asserting that the latest silver bullet doesn't work. Bonus points if you do it eloquently.
Some people may be tempted to misinterpret this that there has been considerable progress in AI (artificial intelligence). Actually, however, this is more indicative of progress in NS (natural stupidity).
Aperature [sic] was NOT intended to replace Photoshop. Aperature's job is to streamline the digital workflow.
Aperture isn't supposed to replace Photoshop in general, but it is supposed to replace it for the specific set of tasks that Apple implemented in Aperture.
Profesionals are looking for workflow automation it would be worth much more than $500 if post shoot time could be cust by even 20%
Quite right. On a busy day, I may take a few thousand photographs in a day and photography isn't even my main job; sorting through those is a major chore. A tool like Aperture would be great for dealing with that, and I was willing to put down the cash for a G5 and Aperture. But if a workflow tool doesn't have top notch RAW conversions and adjustments, and if it isn't lightning fast for annotations, it just isn't worth it, and Aperture falls short in all those areas. That's why I'm sticking with homegrown tools for workflow and adjustment for now.
The non-commercial and public angle is made well enough already by the people who are in a position to make such arguments. IBM is a commercial software vendor and they wouldn't fool anybody into thinking otherwise if they tried.
Overall, I think it's a good thing that big vendors are advertising their products by stressing the value of open document formats to potential buyers because it shows that the formats are commercially supported and that businesses have an interested to continue to support them. The more commercial sales pitches MA gets for products using open document formats, the easier it will be for them to adopt such formats.
This is mostly a tool for organizing and making standard alterations to the massive collections professional photographers amass.
Yes, we agree on that.
Trouble is that Aperture seems to fall short even for the limited set of standard alterations that they implement. Something like sharpen with thresholds and adjust curves should be in there, and it isn't.
Therefore, people will have to continue to use Photoshop even for those standard alterations.
In Apple's defense, one has to say that good photographers usually don't need to do big adjustments to their images--the images come out nearly perfectly from the camera. Browsing and management are more important.
However, even taking that into account, it sounds like they still got some pretty basic things wrong. Pity, because the world really does need an alternative to Photoshop.
Joel ingeniously created a way for him to educate interested and intelligent people about the software development process and unobtrusively promote his business at the same time.
That statement presumes that his advice actually unconditionally works for the kind of software development most organizations need to do, which just isn't true. Neither his experience nor his products are representative of most software development.
but more importantly, to new applications in optical data processing"
You can't be serious. Obviously, car paint that changes with temperature is far more important than new applications in optical data processing. I mean, people won't be able to identify my beat up Corvette when I'm speeding because its paint will be red when I'm going 100mph and the engine is hot, and it will be blue when I park it.
(For the humor impaired: I don't speed and I don't drive a Corvette, OK?)
You've got to hand it to Joel: regardless of what you may think of his programming skills, he does have the art of shameless self-promotion down to a science.
Slashdot Mirror
That's kind of self-limiting: if you leave you wireless network unprotected and people use it for doing something illegal, you are likely going to be in trouble in some form. First, the presumption will be that you are the criminal. Even if you can prove that it wasn't you, you may still be help responsible for your lack of security. And I doubt this is going to be any different in the US or Italy; it's only that in Italy, this sort of thing requires a law, while in the US, it can be introduced through case law.
Zero-gravity pr0n is obviously the biggest business opportunity.
Let me ask another question, is asp.net superior to jsp ? No ? Then is it "jsp" itself you're putting down or the people marketing it?
.. that makes next to no sense
.net developers on a daily basis,
I have no opinion on which of the two systems is better; I just pointed out that Java is falling behind ASP.NET, so it doesn't look like it's the future.
And Java is only "portable" to the degree that it limits the degree to which you can access platform-specific features." - omfg
I'm sorry it makes no sense to you; if you actually were in the business of writing high quality cross platform software, it would.
NO [Java is] not an open standard, but it IS portable.
Good that you acknowledge it. Now, you may believe that a proprietary standard is a good standard, but I disagree.
I work with both java and
Well, with people like you in this industry, it's no wonder that software quality is so awful.
First, Cryptography is hard. Even professional cryptographers with decades of experience still get it wrong -- often. Considering as this guy has essentially no previous experience (he's an EE professor), it's already near certain that he's dead wrong.
He is doing cryptography in the quantum cryptography sense--a secure, non-interceptable channel--not in the algorithmic cryptography sense. He is well-qualified to talk about the kinds of systems he is talking about.
Second, he doesn't provide "absolutely secure" communications. He provides non-interceptable communications. He's totally ignoring authentication, non-repudiation, man-in-the-middle attacks, and half a dozen other very important problems. (It's also not a cipher, but we'll ignore that slip.)
Again, he isn't trying to do any of those things; he is proposing a way of creating a physically secure channel, in the same sense that quantum cryptography is.
And to top it all off, he's depending on the precise values of voltage and current,
Wrong again. He is proposing a system in which resistances are altered in steps. That's no different and no more analog than any other digital system.
This is such bad research that I can't wait until Bruce Schneier get ahold of this.
Unless Schneier is an expert on electronics, Schneier isn't qualified to say anything about this.
Yes, this guy's system probably doesn't work. But, really, your response is even dumber than his proposal.
I agree: languages/environments like .NET are the future: they are easier to develop for, prevent silly programming mistakes, and help with security.
.NET; many languages have that property. Microsoft deserves no credit for the technologies in .NET or VisualStudio, since those technologies are 20 years old and weren't invented at Microsoft.
But this is nothing specific about
Still, where does that leave open source and free software? We need to discard the user environment and applications written in C and C++; those languages are obsolete for mainstream software development and they are holding back FOSS (the kernel should eventually be discarded and replaced as well, but we can take a little more time for that).
I don't know what language should replace it. Mono would be the obvious candidate, but the fact that it is based on a Microsoft language makes it unattractive to many people. Java is definitely not the answer--it is riddled with technical problems and it is proprietary. Objective-C inherits too many of C/C++'s flaws to be much of an improvement.
The best thing to do might be to come up with a derivative of C that would feel quite familiar to C/C++ programmers, but add garbage collection and runtime safety. It should also probably be batch compiled, since the bloat associated with the JVM and CLR runtimes is unacceptable to many people.
Kids, remember: anti-piracy just doesn't pay.
"Compared to its initial hype and promise, Java has been a dismal failure." - You would need to quantify these constructs, but thats hardly going to happen, now isnt it?
.. fanboi's must die..
That's easy to quantify: Java achieved near 0% of the dynamic web content market, and it achieved near 0% of the desktop application market, both areas where Sun was boasting that they were going to take over leadership from Microsoft (and people like me were supporting and cheering them on). The only area where Java has achieved any significant market share is in dynamic web services, but there Java has already fallen behind ASP.NET. So, in two out of its three target markets, Java has failed completely, and in the third, it's falling behind.
A hell of alot Java promised to be an open standard, a platform for high quality cross platform applications. - And it is. My java apps _are_ portable across systems, even my enterprise application is..
Java is not an open standard. And Java is only "portable" to the degree that it limits the degree to which you can access platform-specific features. That's not a good way of achieving cross-platform capabilities, it's a good way for driving away developers and it's the reason why Java failed in so many areas. Enterprise developers have the least need for high-quality platform integration, which is why Java is still hanging on to life in that area.
Dont MAKE me spank your C#.net.win32 microsoft visual c++ runtime exception throwing [rant continues]
I don't use Microsoft development tools or environments, and I rarely use Windows at all. And I don't recommend any specific alternative to Java (there are plenty, take your pick).
All I'm saying is that people like you are making false statements about Java. Java is a commercial failure compared to its initial hype, it has deep technical flaws, and it is clearly not the future.
Im a problem solver, ill pick the best tool for the job, but fanboi's
You're not a problem solver, you are a Java fanboi. Do us all a favor, take your own advice, and jump of a bridge.
First of all, OpenOffice 1.x is quite robust, mature, and reliable, with some known limitations, in particular in MS compatibility. I have seen some OpenOffice 2.0 bugs (mostly related to MS import), but 2.0 has a lot of improvements that make it worth living with the occasional bugs. Overall, OpenOffice is no different in terms of bugginess from most other large commercial desktop packages.
Is Microsoft Office faster and smaller than OpenOffice? Perhaps, but that's really not relevant. Office suites aren't in a pissing contest for speed or size. Software engineering involves a lot of tradeoffs and making an office suite faster than it needs to be is a waste of time and poor engineering practice. Also, OpenOffice solves a harder problem: it needs a cross-platform codebase (Microsoft just develops largely separate versions) and it needs to maintain compatibility with Microsoft Office.
Now, who is responsible for what OpenOffice is? OpenOffice was originally developed as a closed source piece of software. Much of the code is still that original code. Many of the decisions that are causing problems are still the decisions made back then. And development continues with developers supported by big companies. So, it is wrong to place the blame for OpenOffice's problems on open source. I think overall, open source has greatly contributed to OpenOffice and OpenOffice would be dead by now if it had remained closed source. On the other hand, without the initial proprietary effort, OpenOffice almost certainly wouldn't be as mature as it is.
Brown has some kind of bizarre model of open source in mind where it's only open source if a large portion of individual users contribute. But that's wrong. Open source is a licensing model that ensures access to source code, nothing more and nothing less, and OpenOffice fulfills that. Furthermore, in the case of an office suite, the "users" are big companies: when IBM wants to ship OpenOffice, IBM is the user, and IBM contributes (they happen to do so with software, donations and developers). And it is not necessary, and has never been the case, that a larger percentage of the user base contribute; a big user base is useful for an open source project even if most of the users are not developers. Finally, open source development has never been hugely efficient: open source projects usually take much longer to complete in real time than comparable proprietary projects; but that has never been a problem, and I don't see why it should be a problem now.
Overall, Brown is just confused: about software development, about engineering, and about open source. Maybe Brown should stick to commenting about things he knows something about.
(As for Brown's "most irritating bugs", I would classify them as WONT-FIX and NOT-A-BUG. If those are the biggest problems he has with OpenOffice, then OpenOffice is doing well.)
Sorry clown, Java is the top language/platform in new engineering positions right now. And it continues to grow.
As someone else pointed out already, ASP.NET has already overtaken Java for web development. For dynamic content, Java has been almost completely replaced by Flash and dynamic HTML. And for desktop applications, Java is non-existent in the real world.
Wake up: Java is history. Compared to its initial hype and promise, Java has been a dismal failure. The question you should be asking is: "who the hell uses Java these days". Java promised to be an open standard, a platform for high quality cross platform applications. Instead it's become the new Pascal and the new Cobol (only less successful).
And as for porting to Linux, Java is one of the worst choices for that: it's proprietary, closed source, and single-vendor.
Just imagine how much more effective of a deterrent it would be if we simply guillotine those music fans who dare post song lyrics on the Internet! Off with their heads, I say!
I hope SVG will get widely adopted (at least the basic profile) and replace Flash. I think there is a good chance that it will succeed because there is a need for it that none of the alternatives address well. Technically, I think it's at the threshold--there are multiple implementations, and tools and editors are increasingly supporting it.
However, if SVG were to fail, it would make the argument that there are too many web standards coming out even stronger.
We have barely scratched the surface of what is possible with the current generations of HTML, JavaScript, and SVG. The two areas where a little bit of standardization would be nice would be in support for drag-and-drop (for simplifying uploads) and rich text editing. Other than that, these people should just give it a rest and let us digest the current set of technologies.
Oh and BTW, fork() and the unix process model sucks as a parallellism primitive. I love Win32 threads and io completion ports :/
I see: you indeed are a future Windows programmer, and you are ready to produce the same bloated and flaky software that your predecessors produce.
(FWIW, you don't have to use fork for parallelism on UNIX; UNIX systems have always had better threads than Windows, it's just that UNIX programmers have the good sense not to use threads if they can help it.)
Well, they can easily outsource--I mean it isn't rocket science. Oh, wait.
AJAX will probably be abused. In particular, lots of desktop developers will see it as the technology that finally enables them to force their lousy desktop apps on web users. That's abusing the technology.
But AJAX does let us do things that were messy or impossible before. Google's use of AJAX has been pretty good: it's being used for live updates of in-page information, for scrolling of large maps (with a "bookmark this" feature), and intuitive customization of the home page.
So, AJAX most sucks, but web sites in general mostly suck: people use HTML, DHTML, Flash, JavaScript and Java inappropriately, too. That shouldn't stop us from making new technologies available and for the people who use them carefully to actually use them.
I'm trying to find where a reasonable person (or hell, even an unreasonable one) would come to the conclusion that my statement presumes that his advice works 100% of the time, and I just can't see it, so congrats - nice troll.
I was objecting to your statement that Joel "educate[s] interested and intelligent people about the software development process". The term "software development process" refers to a well-defined body of knowledge and skills, and Joel doesn't educate people about it (but he does write an entertaining blog).
his columns are shameless advertising
No, what I consider "shameless self-promotion" is hiring a documentary film-maker to film interns working on a software development project at your company and then selling the resulting DVDs.
Joel Spolsky and his eloquent Extreme Programming critiques!
Indeed. The quickest way to join the ranks of highly-paid self-proclaimed computer gurus is to pick a fight with the best of them, asserting that the latest silver bullet doesn't work. Bonus points if you do it eloquently.
Some people may be tempted to misinterpret this that there has been considerable progress in AI (artificial intelligence). Actually, however, this is more indicative of progress in NS (natural stupidity).
Aperature [sic] was NOT intended to replace Photoshop. Aperature's job is to streamline the digital workflow.
Aperture isn't supposed to replace Photoshop in general, but it is supposed to replace it for the specific set of tasks that Apple implemented in Aperture.
Profesionals are looking for workflow automation it would be worth much more than $500 if post shoot time could be cust by even 20%
Quite right. On a busy day, I may take a few thousand photographs in a day and photography isn't even my main job; sorting through those is a major chore. A tool like Aperture would be great for dealing with that, and I was willing to put down the cash for a G5 and Aperture. But if a workflow tool doesn't have top notch RAW conversions and adjustments, and if it isn't lightning fast for annotations, it just isn't worth it, and Aperture falls short in all those areas. That's why I'm sticking with homegrown tools for workflow and adjustment for now.
The non-commercial and public angle is made well enough already by the people who are in a position to make such arguments. IBM is a commercial software vendor and they wouldn't fool anybody into thinking otherwise if they tried.
Overall, I think it's a good thing that big vendors are advertising their products by stressing the value of open document formats to potential buyers because it shows that the formats are commercially supported and that businesses have an interested to continue to support them. The more commercial sales pitches MA gets for products using open document formats, the easier it will be for them to adopt such formats.
This is mostly a tool for organizing and making standard alterations to the massive collections professional photographers amass.
Yes, we agree on that.
Trouble is that Aperture seems to fall short even for the limited set of standard alterations that they implement. Something like sharpen with thresholds and adjust curves should be in there, and it isn't.
Therefore, people will have to continue to use Photoshop even for those standard alterations.
So, right idea, bad implementation.
In Apple's defense, one has to say that good photographers usually don't need to do big adjustments to their images--the images come out nearly perfectly from the camera. Browsing and management are more important.
However, even taking that into account, it sounds like they still got some pretty basic things wrong. Pity, because the world really does need an alternative to Photoshop.
Joel ingeniously created a way for him to educate interested and intelligent people about the software development process and unobtrusively promote his business at the same time.
That statement presumes that his advice actually unconditionally works for the kind of software development most organizations need to do, which just isn't true. Neither his experience nor his products are representative of most software development.
but more importantly, to new applications in optical data processing"
You can't be serious. Obviously, car paint that changes with temperature is far more important than new applications in optical data processing. I mean, people won't be able to identify my beat up Corvette when I'm speeding because its paint will be red when I'm going 100mph and the engine is hot, and it will be blue when I park it.
(For the humor impaired: I don't speed and I don't drive a Corvette, OK?)
You've got to hand it to Joel: regardless of what you may think of his programming skills, he does have the art of shameless self-promotion down to a science.