This article makes it seem like Spolsky had way more to do with the founding/creation of StackOverflow than he actually did. Jeff Atwood was the visionary behind Stackoverflow / StackExchange, and (as a far bigger "voice" in computing than Joel ever was) the guy who built initial consensus/mindshare. Spolsky was (at best) just along for the ride, at least initially.
I listened to their podcasts right from the start which doesn't qualify me to comment. But I will anyway.
I'm just not sure this is the case. Joel seemed to have a much better grasp of the big picture. You could tell that he'd thought everything through really well, in the way that you'd expect from a successful business owner.
There's no doubt that Jeff did all the 'work' between the pair - Joel was mainly advising. But I would be very careful about writing off his contribution. I would personally bet a lot of money that Atwood going it alone would have been far less successful.
I'm not saying that Joel contributed more than Jeff either. When you look at two partners, and claim that one is more important than the other... that's a pretty big call to make. And unless you personally know them, I'm not sure you have the evidence to back it up.
Fair enough. But don't you think the coverage in this particular article was a little Spolsky-centric? I agree they're a team (equals), and don't mean to imply Spolsky was a Johnny-come-lately, but the RWW article really just mentioned Atwood in passing. I thought it was a little strange that his name wasn't mentioned til below the fold but, no big deal.
Have you listened to the StackOverflow podcasts? I give Jeff a lot of credit for leading a the SO dev team, but he has shown several times on the podcast that he can be very clueless (for example podcast #48 where they discuss localization). There was another one where he asserted that taking code you wrote in a job to an interview was fair game. He deserves credit for much of the design of StackOverflow and for his team leadership, but I think you are understimating Joel's "strategic" role in this venture. There is a reason why Joel is announcing the SO financing, and not Jeff. It seems pretty clear to me that Jeff is less capable when it comes to "big picture" and "long term" stuff - and I mean no disrespect by that.
Also, Jeff was never a bigger voice in computing than Joel.
Sure; every last podcast. And Joel does have the expertise on the financing/startups side. And maybe I am underestimating his role on the strategic side.
But in terms of who has the bigger "voice", there's no comparison. Atwood is a great popularizer of tech-related topics; he writes short, sweet, lozenge-like posts that appeal to programmers as well as technical non-programmers; whereas Spolsky's focus has always been more narrow. And going by any metric you care to throw out there (Compete, RSS, Alexa, whatever) there's no comparison in terms of traffic.
joel was the one who had the idea to build Q&A side. without joel, there would be no stackoverflow. jeff was the one who researched the whole concept and built the final product. i think both of them were equally important to stackoverflow.
Sorry, I guess the above commment wasn't liked much. What I was trying to asy is the above comment sounds a bit short on anything but personal opinion, which I guess is fine... I was in a rush and will write this out next time. Please site your sources when you make such a strong comment about someone's contribution to a successful project because when you don't it sounds like you are just jealous.
