Monday, August 04, 2003

Joel on Software - Rick Chapman is In Search of Stupidity

Joel on Software - Rick Chapman is In Search of Stupidity "The personal computer software market is Microsoft. Microsoft’s revenues, it turns out, make up 69% of the total revenues of all the top 100 companies combined.
...
Is this just superior marketing, as our imaginary geek claims? Or the result of an illegal monopoly? (Which begs the question: how did Microsoft get that monopoly? You can’t have it both ways.)
According to Rick Chapman, the answer is simpler: Microsoft was the only company on the list that never made a fatal, stupid mistake.
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If you ask me, and I’m biased, no software company can succeed unless there is a programmer at the helm. So far the evidence backs me up. But many of these boneheaded mistakes come from the programmers themselves."

I skimmed In Search of Stupidity at my local Softpro; it got a bit depressing when I noticed the number of Lotus references in the index, and I put it back on the shelf when I glanced at a sentence that included "... Lotus Notes R4 preposterously..."
Thanks to Bob Balaban for the pointer.

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