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A comment on Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets. Parent comment

Re:Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets by tptacek on Friday October 06, 2017 @10:54AM (#15417231)
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.)

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Re:Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets by lmkg on Friday October 06, 2017 @11:49AM (#15417729)
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.

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Re:Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets by tptacek on Friday October 06, 2017 @11:54AM (#15417779)
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.
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