Joel on Software

2003/01/03

I posted a bit of internal documentation that is likely to be of interest only to people using VB6 with DAO database access. It describes the entity classes that we're implementing as we refactor CityDesk, in order to isolate database access code and provide a clean, super-easy interface to database tables. CityDesk Entity Classes.

Yesterday I switched over the CityDesk setup from InnoSetup to My Inno Setup Extensions. Advantages: Pascal scripting, which we don't need but might, and conditional compilations, which allow me to use a single source setup script for the main setup and the upgrade. Inspired by Dr. Motulsky I eliminated three unnecessary steps from setup, for example, the stupid screen that might as well just say, "OK, we realize you just clicked next, please click next again now, thank you." (The famous "ready to install" screen that nobody reads.)

Have you been wondering about Distributed Version Control? It has been a huge productivity boon for us, so I wrote Hg Init, a Mercurial tutorial—check it out!

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You’re reading Joel on Software, stuffed with years and years of completely raving mad articles about software development, managing software teams, designing user interfaces, running successful software companies, and rubber duckies.

About the author.

I’m Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make Trello, which lets you organize anything, together, FogBugz, enlightened issue tracking software for bug tracking, and Kiln, which provides distributed version control and code reviews. I’m also the co-founder and CEO of Stack Exchange. More about me.