> Quick rant: if this had been a Lisp project, and they'd accomplished this stuf...

tptacek · on June 25, 2015

It makes more sense when you understand the "no rewrite" principal.

The code they start with (a) works and (b) is fiddly.

To rewrite it a better language, (b) means they will very likely lose many months to problems with (a).

So, it makes more sense for them to transpile and preserve the fiddley bits than it does for them to rewrite.

pnathan · on June 25, 2015

Oh, it totally makes sense after the first steps. It's a clear progression - obvious, even. But if they had started with a better technology stack up front, it wouldn't have been (such?) an issue.

thedufer · on June 26, 2015

FogBugz was originally an internal tool meant to facilitate writing Fog Creek's original first product (CityDesk, a CMS). It seems pretty reasonable to go with whatever's most comfortable for an internal tool that you don't expect to sell, let alone to have different people running on different OSes.

That is to say, it seems like they did choose the better technology stack for the job at hand. If you're going that direction, the real problems started when Joel got a job at Microsoft.

maxlybbert · on June 25, 2015

Spolsky has praised Lisp and Scheme and mentioned that it was used as the gatekeeper class at his university (e.g., http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchool... ), which makes this comment funnier to me.