Spolsky himself left a comment buried in the discussion on that article:
> Let's put it this way. You have these constraints:
> (1) Six years of code already written in VBScript
> (2) Needs to run on customers' Windows and Unix servers
> (3) Minimize tech support costs
> (4) Many customers refuse to install new runtimes on their servers, either because of IT policies or out of stubborness
> What would be your solution?
Anyway, whether it was a good solution or not, I don't quite understand the need that some people had to pick on someone so harshly. I never really followed Spolsky's blog but as far as I can tell it was pretty tame and respectful. Am I missing something?
Edit: Also, a compiler from one high level language to another is not the hardest thing in the world to write. We've got college kids these days writing new languages that compile to JavaScript. Maybe this was viewed as more of an extraordinary engineering feat back then or something.
Creating a new language is trivial (Hell, I've made one). Creating a robust, well-designed, full-featured, peformant language is very much not.
And that totally ignores the absolutely massive benefit of having a community around your language of choice. Libraries, bug fixes, googleability, a pool of programmers to hire from, etc, etc, etc.
I don't think the arguments against were hinged that much on difficulty. Mostly it stemmed from supportability, correctness, having to train all your new hires on your new language, etc.
Sometimes, sure, the right move is the least worst decision. But that doesn't excuse it for being a bad solution in general.
> I don't quite understand the need that some people had to pick on someone so harshly. I never really followed Spolsky's blog but as far as I can tell it was pretty tame and respectful. Am I missing something?
Fierce discussion isn't harsh, it's just that the underlying topic is so interesting that people feel inclined to pick apart the pros/cons extensively until they arrive a brick wall of pure disagreement.
> Let's put it this way. You have these constraints:
> (1) Six years of code already written in VBScript
> (2) Needs to run on customers' Windows and Unix servers
> (3) Minimize tech support costs
> (4) Many customers refuse to install new runtimes on their servers, either because of IT policies or out of stubborness
> What would be your solution?
Anyway, whether it was a good solution or not, I don't quite understand the need that some people had to pick on someone so harshly. I never really followed Spolsky's blog but as far as I can tell it was pretty tame and respectful. Am I missing something?
Edit: Also, a compiler from one high level language to another is not the hardest thing in the world to write. We've got college kids these days writing new languages that compile to JavaScript. Maybe this was viewed as more of an extraordinary engineering feat back then or something.