I'm a bit behind, I know, but I'm just catching up with blogs and stuff from December...
Was reading Zed Shaw's blog (the brains behind Mongrel, the awesome app server for Ruby. It's good. He's damn smart). Specifically his rant about the crazy 'simplicity is overrated' posts by Donald Norman and Joel Spolsky. Zed doesn't mince his words, but I have to agree with the majority of his comments. However, he is particularly harsh about Joel's bug tracking app, FogBugz. Now, I remember playing with a trial of FogBugz a while back and wasn't blown away - it just wasn't for me. But that's besides the point...
The (amusing) point is, I diligently read Joel's article to get his side of the story and, yes, he really is slamming simplicity. More features = good, less = bad. So then I click on the FogBugz link to take another look - maybe I just didn't 'get it' before, and what's the first thing I see on the page? A quote from Ben Trott of Six Apart: "What makes FogBugz better than other bug and issue tracking systems is its simplicity."
LOL. Sure, you might be able to read Joel's rant and work it into something that fits the quote, but the fact that they have a big fat quote in the prime position of their product home page stating that the product is great because it is simple is just too funny.
I think Zed was a bit harsh on Donald and Joel, both of which I respect and have written some seriously good articles, but this was just too funny not to share :)
