Bill Gates has a history of betting the company on the next technology generation.  One of these days he'll lose the bet--or he'll lose interest in the game--and MS will start looking like Ford.  Or Exxon.  Maybe AT&T.  Perhaps a (large) piece of Planetary Software, LTD.  (You think not?   Happened to Carnegie Steel....)  Dare I mention Western Union?  How about the Pennsylvania Railroad?

It's gonna happen.  Probably in my lifetime.

But not yet.

His contention is that MS has bet the company on the wrong horse by abandoning backwards compatibility, thus effectively destablizing the Windows platform and encouraging developers to look at other tools and other environments.  Joel characterizes this as an abandonment of the Windows API.  He anticipates movement to the web as a development platform.  That might be true, but he hasn't convinced me.  This isn't Joel's finest effort--it's not as witty as his best writing, and I'm unconvinced by his conclusions.  Nonetheless, the article's interesting, and worth your time to read.

Regardless:  Welcome back!  We've missed you.

Update 6/18:   I've rewritten the second paragraph of this note to sharpen its point.  Nonetheless, many people think Joel's essay's more important than I do.  If he's right about the movement, that belief is correct.  I'm continuing to withhold judgment.

Spent more of the day than I'd intended reworking the site's index pages; first I had to figure out how to code the changes, then there was a lot of manual labor involved in implementing those changes.  Most of the time was spent moving files.

The routine was:

• change a set of files,
• upload the files,
• test the changes.

Even when it worked well, it was pretty slow.  Sometimes it didn't work well.

I do like the improved listings, though; this is where I was planning to (eventually) get. I had three objects for the day, and think I came close: Simplify (partially automate, actually) site maintenance for the webmaster, shorten the index pages, and sacrifice as few links as possible. Further slight changes are likely; I am still experimenting. The tricks I've learned today will help me cross-reference related pages in the near future, which is clearly desirable.

I also moved a few files, and changed the name of the picture book to the time traveler [9/5/04: now PictureShow!]. I trust no one was terribly inconvenienced, and my apologies for any confusions.

The decision not to take the fix was a difficult one, because we all want to ship a completely bug-free product. Given the cost to develop, implement, and test the fix, the time available, the severity of the bug, the worst-case scenario for not fixing it, and the relative priority of other issues at hand, we wound up making the painful decision to not fix this bug, and a handful of others. Given all of those factors, I think we made the right choice. In the meantime, I think we have a reasonable workaround.

Incessant Ramblings/The anatomy of a bug

Where I work, testing sometimes leads to debates about law and policy. Except for that little thing, Joe's got the story nailed down tight. Only it ain't tight at all. It's chaos.