Gadgetopia

Wasabi: In response to comments from his post yesterday (which we discussed), Joel has released information about Wasabi, which is a compiler they wrote so they code generate code for FogBugz in VBScript (for Windows) or PHP (for Linux).

Fog Creek used to write in VBScript and automatically convert it to PHP via something called Thistle (detailed here), but this has apparently changed.

Since we don’t want to program in VBScript or PHP4 or even PHP5 and we certainly don’t want to have to port everything to three target platforms, the best solution for us is a custom language that compiles to our target platforms.

And, yes, PHP runs on Windows, but he lists numerous reasons why it’s easier to do it this way.

This all goes back to a interview with Spolsky I listened to (and blogged about) last year in which he discusses that you need to stay away from proprietary languages (like .Net) if you’re going to be selling your product. You need to write your product in a free language so you know it will always be there, then convert it to other (proprietary) languages if you want.

In this sense, programming in VBScript was actually a huge benefit for Fog Creek. Because it’s such a limited language, it kept them working in the “lowest common denominator,” so they didn’t do anything that couldn’t be handled in multiple other languages. Put another way, there ain’t one single thing that classic ASP does that PHP can’t do, however, the inverse isn’t true at all.

Like his comments on Rails, it’s a debatable point, but it seems to work well for them.