May 30: Portland OR:
RailsConf 2008
RailsConf 2008
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May 30: Portland OR:
RailsConf 2008 |
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Wanted: Web Data Architect
at UpCompany (New York, NY 10023).
See this and other great job listings at
jobs.joelonsoftware.com.
2002/10/02This item ran on the Joel on Software homepage on Wednesday, October 02, 2002I've been snowed under for the last four weeks, working on the FogBUGZ 3.0 Setup program. For various reasons none of the commercial setup toolkits (Wise, InstallShield, Windows Installer) could do even 25% of what our setup program needed to do, so I ended up writing it from scratch. VC++ and MFC all the way. It took longer than I expected because I had this weird conviction that the entire setup process should be completely reversable, and as you go backwards through the wizard it should automatically and silently undo any changes it had already made. So even if you're looking at the last screen, if you decide you want to change where to extract the files, you can just back up and change it and everything moves and all the old files you overwrote are put back and all the Windows accounts you created are uncreated and all the permissions we granted are ungranted and the SQL database you made is unmade and so on. The end result is a great setup program, but it may be a tad overkill. If I have time I'll write more about what I learned.
One benefit of writing a setup program from scratch is that I don't have to have someone else's stupid cartoon-of-a-computer-and-floppy-disks in the upper right hand corner. I used a photograph of the London Skyline, currently infested with cranes. I took the picture from the cafe at the Tate Modern.
 Discuss at joel.reddit.com
Students: Fog Creek Software has awesome summer internships in New York City. You get free housing, free lunches, lots of free New York activities, and a chance to write great code with great developers. And a competitive salary. Apply today: we only have four open positions and usually get hundreds of applications, which will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis. About the Author: I'm your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. For my day job, I run Fog Creek Software, makers of FogBugz - the smart bug tracking software with the stupid name, and Fog Creek Copilot - the easiest way to provide remote tech support over the Internet, with nothing to install or configure. Enter your email address to receive a (very occasional) email whenever I write a major new article. You can unsubscribe at any time, of course. |
 I'm your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. More about me.
There's a complete archive of everything going back to 2000. The home page is reserved for minor, ephemeral thoughts, but occasionally I write a longer article. You can sign up to receive email whenever this happens at the bottom of this page. We also have one of those RSS thingamajiggies. If you don't know what that is, consider yourself lucky.
This site has been translated by volunteers around the world into more than thirty languages.
Want to hire great developers? Looking for a job that doesn't suck? Check out the popular job board or the job board for India.
Have feedback? There are several popular discussion boards on this site: Joel on Software
Business of Software Design of Software .NET Questions TechInterview.org CityDesk FogBugz Fog Creek Copilot You can also email me directly, although my mailbox is an official disaster area.
For my day job, I'm the CEO of Fog Creek Software, a bootstrapped software company in New York, NY.
We make FogBugz, a bug tracking system that actually works and can be used to manage everything your development does, from bug tracking to customer email to feature management to project scheduling and so much more. Check out the screenshots or the free online trial.
We also make Fog Creek Copilot, which lets you control someone else's computer (with their permission, of course) over the Internet. It's the best way to fix someone's computer problems remotely. There's nothing to install, it's simple as heck, and it works through any kind of firewall, NAT, or proxy situation with zero configuration. More
If you're in college, Fog Creek Software has a very cool paid internship program (last year's interns developed Copilot in one summer). We also run a Software Management Training Program, an intensive three-year program for college graduates to learn about managing high tech that combines a Masters in Technology Management with extensive hands-on experience in a variety of positions.
Wondering what it's like to develop software at Fog Creek? The documentary Aardvark'd covers the story of the development of Copilot. It's available on DVD.
 So far, this site has been made into three books: User Interface Design for Programmers, Joel on Software, and Smart and Gets Things Done. All are excellent ways to catch up on years of the drivel that appears here without going blind reading it on a tiny screen. I’m also the editor of The Best Software Writing, a collection of other people's superb essays about software. Fog Creek co-founder Michael Pryor has his own site on Technical Interview Questions.
 The entire contents of this site represent the opinions of one person. This site is built with CityDesk and hosted by Peer 1 Network. © 1999-2008 Joel Spolsky. All Rights Reserved. Linking, quoting and reprinting
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