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The Joel on Software Discussion Group (CLOSED)

... when he writes tripe like this:

http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

I quote some of the more hilarious inaccuracies in the article:

"And that was the second cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the desktop is over. It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just email, but everything, right up to Photoshop. Even Microsoft sees that now."

He seriously thinks Photoshop will be on the Web soon.


"Thanks to OSX, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway."

This deluded man thinks that Apple, with its 3% market share in the desktop business, has ended the dominance of the Windows OS. Will someone please tell him that Windows still powers some 90% of the computers out there? And that plenty of non-grandma people use it too?

What is Paul Graham smoking?

I know you're just trolling, but just to correct your two major points: Adobe IS releasing a web-based Photoshop, and Apple marketshare is 6% according to the newest statistics. Not much, but it's a start.

I did have my problems with some of Paul's essays in the past, but if his ycombinator stays as successful as it is right now, I'll have to reconsider.

Yeah, he does seem pretty detached from reality.  I don't think you can make these two arguments in the same post and not seem like an idiot. 

The desktop is dead!  OSX is great and I'll only use it and only trust those who use it!

Even if you believe every app is going to imminently be done over the web - (and I personally I don't) - video editing? 3D games? graphics? CAD? music sequencer/sampling?) - there is still an awful lot of software beyond the stuff visible in a browser - in fact a lot of non-browser stuff is required just to make the browser happen.

If the desktop is completely dead, who is going to write the software which actually displays stuff on my screen (I don't mean software than tells something else to tell something else to tell something to write something on the screen - but the thing that actually does the writing), responds to my keyboard/mouse, connects my digital camera, camcorder, scanner and other devices, and gets my computer to talk to the Internet, etc.

Well I'm not listening to him anymore.
http://www.benpoint.com/success.htm

Crap! And I just ordered a new windows laptop for my c++ desktop project.

I wonder if I can return it.

Photoshop IS on the web now, maybe you should have clicked to see http://snipshot.com/

> They still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by the standards of the desktop world.

He says this after admitting that key advances in Ajax were pioneered by Microsoft.

>  "Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook."

Lets not forget he has an agenda. He is not playing a Nostradamus; he is not predicting the future. He's peddling his companies.

Well, apart from the fact that Adobe announced that Photoshop WILL be available on the web...

I DO agree that Paul Graham has jumped the shark, and is now forced to say contentious (i.e. deliberately inflammatory and stupid) things in order to keep his media profile high (which is necessary for his current job).

+1 Ben.

Because he's crackers.

I think PG is wrong, wrong, wrong!

Microsoft is not dead! No way!

It's obvious to me that Microsoft is undead.

Words game aside, many of the successes of people out there revolve outside of the scope of Microsoft, as unbelievable as it may be.

As long as Internet Explorer allows for Windows users to consume your service, you won't have a problem finding users in the Microsoft-land, even if your home is in Mac-land or in Linux-land.

It's like being able to live almost anywhere in your country, in any state, so you can move around anytime, and your business will continue because much like the telephone/cellular, it works anywhere you go, anyway. This mobility frees you somewhat, so you can avoid living in New York just because it "rocks". :-)

Summing up in one word: promiscuity. Or in two: natural promiscuity. Why? Because you don't have to think to do it, so young-guns, like in the P.G.'s example, don't even know what's going on, they just are living as well as they can, with little loyalty to traditions and things like that.

Sure, I'll bite.  I pay attention to PG because he is enjoyable to read and he says interesting things.

I don't need to agree with everything a guy writes.  I want interesting ideas, or entertaining style, or both.  Paul Graham has both.  Most writers have neither.

Here's an excerpt from today's essay:

"Microsoft saw the danger of Javascript and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could. [1] But eventually the open source world won, by producing Javascript libraries that grew over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows over barbed wire."

I'm sure someone will quibble over the above, but it is easy to understand what PG is getting at, and it is a pleasure to read.  Worth the price of admission all by itself.

Lighten up.  Look for the good and leave the rest.  Don't take everything so damned literally.

I never suspected so many Microserfs read this board.

Let us examine:

If you read Paul Grahams bio you learn he is writing a book on startups.  He is also a partner in a firm that specializes in funding the early stages of startups, Y Combinator, information found by clicking on the links in that bio.

Michael Archer writes:

"This deluded man thinks that Apple, with its 3% market share in the desktop business, has ended the dominance of the Windows OS. Will someone please tell him that Windows still powers some 90% of the computers out there? And that plenty of non-grandma people use it too?"

Grandma, grandpa, and other inept family members and friends or people stuck on cubie farms running on the corporate treadmill for the man aside - Windows is irrelevant and largely relegated to PC's that don't matter.  Paul Graham obviously works in an environment far removed from dime a dozen Windows clicking programmers and you are the one that is a fool if you think these type of people use Windows;  The Windows market share or mind share is nowhere remotely close to 90% in this context.

Surely you have seen the Steve Ballmer video where people mock Mr. Ballmer as monkey boy for screaming and dancing while chanting "Developers! Developers! Developers!"  It is exactly the context Paul Graham is commenting on that Steve Ballmer was addressing when that video surfaced, as a simple example.  Perhaps this link might put it in a better context: 

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.458933.12

Any particular reason why you and your friend where not using Windows in this instance?  You never elaborated if this was a side project at work or off work or whether this was an inherited project or a new idea for a potential product that may be of value.  What you did demonstrate is that you openly knew nothing about other technologies except Windows so you are the last person to be qualified asking the question:

"What is Paul Graham smoking?"

I think you missed the subject when you sparked the discussion.

"Photoshop IS on the web now"

That's not Photoshop. Not even close.

Nobody needs to remind others of this, but some of the comments here make this necessary: Current market share is a reflection of the past and the present. It tells nothing of the future. PG wrote about the factors present today that will manifest themselves in the future. In that sense, Microsoft isn't dead. But the factors are already in place that will ensure MS loses its dominance going forward.

I predict MS's demise, when it comes, will be more like Detroit's than like the Dotcoms. It will a long drawn out, one-leg-in-the-coffin-the-other-without kind of death.

I think Paul intent is "MS should be dead".

"That's not Photoshop. Not even close."

That's correct, but I wager that it meets the needs of the 80% of users out there... the ones who could never rationalize buying Photoshop and were just stealing it anyway.  ;)

That's totally not Photoshop, it's not even iPhoto. I've got a fast line and a fast computer, and even for basic square crop and 90 degree rotate, those programs are as slow as a dog in addition to having no features.

+5 for Matt Conrad

"That's correct, but I wager that it meets the needs of the 80% of users out there... "

Photoshop is aimed at photographers and designers (professionals or serious enthusiasts). It is not marketed for this 80% of users.

"I know you're just trolling, but just to correct your two major points: Adobe IS releasing a web-based Photoshop, and Apple marketshare is 6% according to the newest statistics. Not much, but it's a start."

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2

Mac OS market share is 3.94% unless you pull some magical number out of your ass.

Paul Graham is trying to sell all his Web 2.0 start up. ye fool!

If he was really trying to sell his start-ups to Microsoft, wouldn't he have bothered inviting them to his demo days? (which he says in the article he didn't)

"If he was really trying to sell his start-ups to Microsoft"

who say he is trying to sell his start up to Microsoft, he is peddling his Web 2.0 start up to any fool who believe Web 2.0 hype and you Sir is his target fool.

"Adobe IS releasing a web-based Photoshop"

No, Adobe is releasing a web-based product that uses the Photoshop brand-name.  However, when people say "Photoshop" they mean "Photoshop CS2", not "Photoshop Elements", and by all accounts this web-based thing won't even be as powerful as Elements.

Face it, web-heads: so-called "web apps" are actually just extremely basic editing front-ends built onto the only real web-based technology, which is the online file storage and sharing.  All serious editing, whether of photos, documents, or spreadsheets, does now and will for the foreseeable future take place in heavyweight desktop applications.

Which might at some point develop better interfaces to various online file storage services and better collaboration features, but which are very unlikely to be replaced by JavaScript in a web browser, because really, what's the point?

Average Coder,

Thanks for the great link (and for bringing some facts in). I do agree that Windows is far from dead and no death in sight (Vista already has half the market share of the Mac O/S).  I'm no Microsoft Fan boy, but I recognize (and develop for ) reality.

HOWEVER... the stats you showed would indicate that Mac use is 6% (I'm assuming MacIntel is a Macintosh O/S running on Intel H/W).

Mac OS 3.94%
MacIntel 2.14%
Total Mac  6.08%

"HOWEVER... the stats you showed would indicate that Mac use is 6%"

He's a average mathmetician.

>He's a average mathmetician.[sic]

You have very forgiving standards.

Next week...

Digg is dead!
Long live Reddit!

:)

I was curious if other people had said that "Microsoft is undead", and Google revealed this gem:

"Microsoft is undead in a world seemingly free of wooden stakes or silver bullets."
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=8232&limit=no#279573

This one is for the record! :-)

"Mac OS 3.94%
MacIntel 2.14%
Total Mac  6.08%"

This is imo probably misleading as I suspect a lot of the MacIntel owners also own PPC-based Macs. I know that Apple grabbed a lot of switchers recently, but I don't think they make most of that 2.14%.

+10 for I think Paul intent is "MS should be dead".

-10 for Paul Graham

+5? +10?!!

Whatever happened to one person, one vote? :-)

Four reason I want some of that quality crack PG is on plz k lol k thx bye!

Reason #1

Someone quick! Tell randma Matlab, AutoCAD, Quark Xpress, VS.NET, and on and on and on will from now on run as client-side javascript!!!

Someone quick, get a bucket for Grandma to gather the pouring tears.

...make it a very big bucket.

Reason #2

All over the world large ISPs are indiscriminately under-delivering (okay this is not Wikipedia, so I am going to visit my grandma's house in Tainan and measure what cheating bastards those internet providers are for and link a pretty Excel chart here) and over-promising. Wires that can run 20Mbps are easily getting away doing little more than 200Kbps down and even less up. Try to Photoshop that.

Reason #3

The big telcos and network providers want to put three in the chest one in the head in Net-neutrality using Layer 7 routers but all they can do now is to indiscriminately throtte any encrypted packet--just because some P2P traffic happen to be encrypted as well.

Reason #4

Ref: http://www.thomaspurves.com/2007/04/09/canada-worse-than-3rd-world-countries-when-it-comes-to-mobile-data-access/

In Canada people could [maybe not so] theoretically pay thousands for just a few measly megabytes over cell networks. If you can't get socialistic free wifi over a first world nation generally stuck in piss poor weather preventing people from going out and shop/consume/etc--e-shopping is not going to work--let alone NetPhotoshop .

Not only is this sort of infrastructure not going to work for someone wanting to use a web-version of Photoshop, it's not going to work for someone with just ONE roll of Canon RAW files trying to upload to Flickr.

One needs to give PG +1 though. You wrap Qt around a whole bunch of Windows mainstays and I suppose we really can say good bye to Windows.