[A picture of private offices at Fog Creek Software]  Joel on
Software  Five Worlds  by Joel Spolsky Monday, May 06, 2002
You read a book about UML modeling, and nowhere does it say that
it doesn't make sense for programming device drivers. Or you
read an article saying that "the 20MB runtime [required for
.NET] is a NON issue" and it doesn't mention the obvious: if
you're trying to write code for a 32KB ROM on a pager it very
much is an issue!     1. Shrinkwrap   2. Internal   3. Embedded
4. Games   5. Throwaway   Let's go over the categories briefly.
Shrinkwrap has special problems which derive from two special
properties:    • Since it has so many users who often have
alternatives, the user interface needs to be easier than average
in order to achieve success.   • Since it runs on so many
computers, the code must be unusually resilient to variations
between computers. Last week someone emailed me about a bug in
CityDesk which only appears in Polish Windows, because of the
way that operating system u