Re:Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets
by chrisseaton on Friday October 06, 2017 @10:47AM
(#15417170)
Isn't the PM the one who leads project? (I don't work in a team that uses these terms so genuinely asking.)
A product manager generally owns the spec for a product, but doesn't lead development of it.
(Microsoft has a more complicated PM scheme with I think two different kinds of PMs? So I can't speak to exactly what Spolsky's role was there. It wasn't a small role, but no, I don't think he led Excel development.)
Spolsky's role is addressed in his blog post about The Time That Bill Gates Reviewed His Work. It's an interesting read itself, I recommend it.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
tl;dr He wrote the spec for VBA, aka Excel Macros. It's not being in charge of all of Excel, but I would call that a pretty substantial contribution.
It is definitely not my point that Spolsky's role with Excel was unimportant. Hopefully, none of my comments can be taken as minimizing his role at all. I'm just saying he wasn't an Excel dev lead, which is a distinction that is relevant to this thread.
I happen to like Spolsky a lot but most of the career success we've actually seen from him is managerial, which is not unimportant, but it's not the same as being a dev lead on Excel.
On the other hand, Spolsky's programming advice is much more broad-spectrum and rooted in common sense. I'm not sure you've ever seen Spolsky dismiss a whole category of languages or correctness tools, for instance.