Goodbye Joyent(zinascii.com)
zinascii.com
Goodbye Joyent
https://zinascii.com/2020/goodbye-joyent.html
77 comments
> I read a lot of code too, which wasn’t always easy, but sometimes I was lucky enough to find myself treated to one of Robert’s epic block comments[0].
He wasn't exaggerating, that is an epic, beautiful, I would even say humbling block comment to read. It's completely outside of my regular knowledge domain but that is not at all required to appreciate it.
[0] https://github.com/joyent/illumos-joyent/blob/dff0473c792fc5...
He wasn't exaggerating, that is an epic, beautiful, I would even say humbling block comment to read. It's completely outside of my regular knowledge domain but that is not at all required to appreciate it.
[0] https://github.com/joyent/illumos-joyent/blob/dff0473c792fc5...
it’s a horrible comment. OTOH it’s world class documentation. obviously i’m not comparing myself, but i often find myself the only one at my $JOB that documents things at similar level. 99% of the time because i’m touching code i don’t understand and need to understand it first. writing the doco is the way i do it.
software would be soooo much better if we lived in a world where a) engineering practice demanded devs document this well, and b) the majority of devs had the skill to write so well. market pressure however demands faster delivery times, and who cares about the tech debt.
software would be soooo much better if we lived in a world where a) engineering practice demanded devs document this well, and b) the majority of devs had the skill to write so well. market pressure however demands faster delivery times, and who cares about the tech debt.
What a joy to work with Bryan et al. Probably the best paid education you could imagine.
Is Samsung doing nothing with joyent? Seems they could and should be competing heavily in the server space if not the public cloud itself more meaningfully than they seem to be today.
Is Samsung doing nothing with joyent? Seems they could and should be competing heavily in the server space if not the public cloud itself more meaningfully than they seem to be today.
Joyent Public Cloud was shut down (three years after the Samsung acquisition): https://docs.joyent.com/joyent-public-cloud-eol
> What a joy to work with Bryan et al.
Presumably not for Ben Noordhuis: https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun
That blog post is why I resolved never to do business with Bryan Cantrill or Joyent. I don't know if it influenced others to do likewise, but I can't imagine that it actually helped the company succeed.
Presumably not for Ben Noordhuis: https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun
That blog post is why I resolved never to do business with Bryan Cantrill or Joyent. I don't know if it influenced others to do likewise, but I can't imagine that it actually helped the company succeed.
My goodness. Bryan Cantrill comes off as a complete fascist in that blog post.
I can't believe he would actually post something like that on Joyent's domain.
It's a personal attack on someone doing something he disagrees with. Shaming via a public space like that is just not done. It's okay to agree to disagree on a subject like gendered pronouns, just like it's okay to disagree on abortion laws or gun control.
I can't believe he would actually post something like that on Joyent's domain.
It's a personal attack on someone doing something he disagrees with. Shaming via a public space like that is just not done. It's okay to agree to disagree on a subject like gendered pronouns, just like it's okay to disagree on abortion laws or gun control.
But the entire point of the post you linked is that they don't work together.
It sounds to me like the parent was on Ben's side and he wanted to keep all the gendered pronouns in place.
lurker20484(1)
I had to look up ‘SmartOS’ and ‘OmniOS’ because I had no idea what they are.
NOTE: This isn’t meant as an insult; it’s just that often people use terms as if they were universally known. He had hyperlinks to some of the more obscure items on the list but not the key items.
NOTE: This isn’t meant as an insult; it’s just that often people use terms as if they were universally known. He had hyperlinks to some of the more obscure items on the list but not the key items.
This shows you how licensing problems and marketing are intertwined, and can kill off developer recognition of even OSes that are significantly advanced technically.
Since the kernel and coreutils are GPL there aren't any sue-happy lawyers waiting to pounce upon CEOs saying "We use Linux", the broad family of Linux kernel based OSes (Debian, RHEL, Ubuntu, etc.) have generally gained the marketing term Linux.
I feel that Solaris missed out on this in a shockingly bad manner. Perhaps ex-Sun/Joyent folks can correct me if they feel I'm wrong, but it seems that the Solaris "family" of operating systems has always been way harder to understand than Linux-based, mostly open-source systems. Do I want illumos, OpenSolaris, or OpenIndiana? Or do I actually want Oracle Solaris? Which is the one that Oracle will not try to sue me for?
So here is a broader lesson for people trying to open source their OS, if there is ever a grand project like Solaris. Make it all open source at once, and use a copyleft license like the GPL. Otherwise you risk this kind of breakdown where there are N different operating systems that are vaguely related to and worked on by the same people, but you can't name them in a coherent manner or rely upon broad similarities.
Since the kernel and coreutils are GPL there aren't any sue-happy lawyers waiting to pounce upon CEOs saying "We use Linux", the broad family of Linux kernel based OSes (Debian, RHEL, Ubuntu, etc.) have generally gained the marketing term Linux.
I feel that Solaris missed out on this in a shockingly bad manner. Perhaps ex-Sun/Joyent folks can correct me if they feel I'm wrong, but it seems that the Solaris "family" of operating systems has always been way harder to understand than Linux-based, mostly open-source systems. Do I want illumos, OpenSolaris, or OpenIndiana? Or do I actually want Oracle Solaris? Which is the one that Oracle will not try to sue me for?
So here is a broader lesson for people trying to open source their OS, if there is ever a grand project like Solaris. Make it all open source at once, and use a copyleft license like the GPL. Otherwise you risk this kind of breakdown where there are N different operating systems that are vaguely related to and worked on by the same people, but you can't name them in a coherent manner or rely upon broad similarities.
How would GPL prevent anyone from being sued in a way that a permissive license wouldn't?
My thinking is that the one-way opening of source code due to the GPL ensures that a company cannot reverse its overall stance on taking an OS open (like Oracle-Sun did with Solaris); and forces it to think in an open-first way (for lack of a better term).
If Solaris source had always been available under the GPL, it would have removed the incentive for Oracle-Sun to sue other people for announcing support for OpenSolaris or RedSolaris, or whatever. Of course they might have done that anyway, but in 2020 they would have been more likely to donate it to the Apache Foundation or something. Or we could have had the competing Solaris Foundation, promoting its Sun-centric technologies like dtrace, zones, and zfs as first-class alternatives to the corresponding Linux technologies.
Obvious disclaimers: Not a lawyer and not necessary good at predicting alternate futures :)
If Solaris source had always been available under the GPL, it would have removed the incentive for Oracle-Sun to sue other people for announcing support for OpenSolaris or RedSolaris, or whatever. Of course they might have done that anyway, but in 2020 they would have been more likely to donate it to the Apache Foundation or something. Or we could have had the competing Solaris Foundation, promoting its Sun-centric technologies like dtrace, zones, and zfs as first-class alternatives to the corresponding Linux technologies.
Obvious disclaimers: Not a lawyer and not necessary good at predicting alternate futures :)
There’s nothing in GPL that prevents or prohibits closing later versions. This is also true for the CDDL. The reason Oracle was able to close Solaris after it had been open is that Sun had required a contributor license agreement that assigned the copyright for your code to Sun before they would accept your changes. This would work even for the GPL.
The CLA is actually what initially prompted the illumos fork even before Oracle closed the gate.
Joyent initially had a CLA on Node.js for business reasons that (as far as I know) everyone in engineering disagreed with. When we were finally able to make Triton (née SmartDataCenter) open source we also eliminated the CLA for node.
We now have contributions from many people under the MPLv2 in Triton, and we are no longer the exclusive copyright holder which means that it is pretty much impossible\* for Samsung to close it again.
* We would have to either rip out all those commits or get every contributor to either relicense or assign copyright to Joyent.
The CLA is actually what initially prompted the illumos fork even before Oracle closed the gate.
Joyent initially had a CLA on Node.js for business reasons that (as far as I know) everyone in engineering disagreed with. When we were finally able to make Triton (née SmartDataCenter) open source we also eliminated the CLA for node.
We now have contributions from many people under the MPLv2 in Triton, and we are no longer the exclusive copyright holder which means that it is pretty much impossible\* for Samsung to close it again.
* We would have to either rip out all those commits or get every contributor to either relicense or assign copyright to Joyent.
A company that owns its code can release version 1 under the GPL and version 2 under some proprietary license just fine. We actually see this in the recent “commons clause” debacle, where previously free software became proprietary.
I’m surprised. They were massive names in the OS scene until recently. Their lineage can be traced back to Solaris and share many of the cool technologies that Sun developers pioneered. So much so that for the first few years of SmartOS, Linux felt like a hobbyist platform in comparison due to its lack of dtrace, containerisations, ZFS, etc.
Linux has come a long way since, which is a large part of the reason why SmartOS has become less relevant. The latter being a great shame because competition breeds innovation and we are losing a lot of interesting interesting Unixes from the public consciousness.
Edit: oh come on. I post this and it almost immediately gets negative karma despite being both factual and informative. A perfect example of the rife abuse of peer moderation on this site. I honestly don’t think I’ll bother wasting my time on here any more.
Linux has come a long way since, which is a large part of the reason why SmartOS has become less relevant. The latter being a great shame because competition breeds innovation and we are losing a lot of interesting interesting Unixes from the public consciousness.
Edit: oh come on. I post this and it almost immediately gets negative karma despite being both factual and informative. A perfect example of the rife abuse of peer moderation on this site. I honestly don’t think I’ll bother wasting my time on here any more.
+1 for your reply and to cheer you up. I also got down-voted to hell for posting that rather innocuous comment — don’t let it get to you.
As for the element of surprise, not everybody moves in the same circles. You might be deep into server-grade operating systems, or DevOps, or other branches of information technology that are far from my daily experience. I haunt the areas associated with theoretical computer science, applied mathematics, finance, and the ins-and-outs of the (European) payments system. Each of our haunts are so vast that it’s easy to be erudite in general and yet still pretty ignorant of things others take for granted.
As for the element of surprise, not everybody moves in the same circles. You might be deep into server-grade operating systems, or DevOps, or other branches of information technology that are far from my daily experience. I haunt the areas associated with theoretical computer science, applied mathematics, finance, and the ins-and-outs of the (European) payments system. Each of our haunts are so vast that it’s easy to be erudite in general and yet still pretty ignorant of things others take for granted.
I did a lot with SmartOS and, eventually, Linux got good enough. But also, Kubernetes won everything, ZFS ended up in everything, and dtrace ended up in most things. It was a thing of beauty but I can't say I ever felt like I properly understood it.
The downvotes might be for the slightly bombastic tone. SmartOs and IllumOS never felt “massive” to me, particularly compared to Linux. They might have had some nice tooling inherited from Solaris, but they were never particularly appealing for people who were not invested in the Solaris ecosystem - which had already been effectively wiped out by Linux by the time IllumOS and SmartOs appeared.
Or maybe the downvotes are related to the rather fanatic behaviour of some readers of this thread – I got downvoted for mentioning I hadn’t heard of those OSes, only to be then voted up; and downvoted elsewhere when I told somebody to cheer up because they had been downvoted for essentially making the same comment. It’s pretty frustrating, to be honest: “try to cheer somebody up, get punished for it” isn’t the way things are meant to be.
For what it is worth, other FOSS OSes are getting the IoT space, not GNU/Linux.
Namely RTOS, Zephyr, NuttX, mbed, and Arduino compatible bare metal implementations.
Common to all of them? None of them is GPL licensed.
Namely RTOS, Zephyr, NuttX, mbed, and Arduino compatible bare metal implementations.
Common to all of them? None of them is GPL licensed.
Your comment reminds me a bit of the relationship between Clojure and JavaScript.
Back in 2014, Clojure-based web development had all kinds of groundbreaking ideas that massively improved quality of life: immutable data structures, hot code reloading (figwheel), decoupling of state and view (devcards), with all the benefits that come with functional programming.
The JavaScript ecosystem has since closed the gap and has a lot of great libraries or tools that do these things, and it's just _so popular_ that it's hard to make the business case for Clojure(Script).
Personally, I still think Clojure has a lot of really smart people contributing to it. It's exciting to see tools like libpython-clj enable Carin Meier's work around leveraging bleeding-edge Python Machine Learning libraries in Clojure, and something in my gut tells me that Rich and Co. are on the right track with spec while the JS community pursues TypeScript instead.
It's true that every project needs a community if it's going to survive, and because the internet makes it so easy to share ideas, being the birthplace of good ideas is not enough to ensure your survival.
I'll be interested to see what the landscape looks like in another half a decade!
Back in 2014, Clojure-based web development had all kinds of groundbreaking ideas that massively improved quality of life: immutable data structures, hot code reloading (figwheel), decoupling of state and view (devcards), with all the benefits that come with functional programming.
The JavaScript ecosystem has since closed the gap and has a lot of great libraries or tools that do these things, and it's just _so popular_ that it's hard to make the business case for Clojure(Script).
Personally, I still think Clojure has a lot of really smart people contributing to it. It's exciting to see tools like libpython-clj enable Carin Meier's work around leveraging bleeding-edge Python Machine Learning libraries in Clojure, and something in my gut tells me that Rich and Co. are on the right track with spec while the JS community pursues TypeScript instead.
It's true that every project needs a community if it's going to survive, and because the internet makes it so easy to share ideas, being the birthplace of good ideas is not enough to ensure your survival.
I'll be interested to see what the landscape looks like in another half a decade!
Illumos is still the only proper open source Unix (Counting BSDs as a slightly different lineage).
Unfortunately, when it comes to hardware support, only the most popular OSes actually thrive :(
Unfortunately, when it comes to hardware support, only the most popular OSes actually thrive :(
At a certain point you just need to Google things for yourself
This is a beautiful goodbye. I don’t recognize most of the names but now I want to.
Always interesting to hear the name Joyent again. The company has had quite the colorful history. Starting from a productivity suite I never understood to then moving into hosting to eventually becoming a major cloud computing provider.
I used some of their Solaris VM's and never had a problem getting eased in. Learning how to get around in one seemed to be just a bit more work than learning a different Linux distro.
The company was fun to be a customer of even if I did lose my Mixed Grill, later upgraded to the 3 Martini Lunch. I imagine even more fun to work for.
I used some of their Solaris VM's and never had a problem getting eased in. Learning how to get around in one seemed to be just a bit more work than learning a different Linux distro.
The company was fun to be a customer of even if I did lose my Mixed Grill, later upgraded to the 3 Martini Lunch. I imagine even more fun to work for.
It is the sign of terrible incompetence to downsize people like him. If you ever get hold of people with this much competence then find a clever project for them, or create a new subsidiary.
The company is doing poorly and it's a miracle it's not closed yet. Better not judge a dying company for laying off (all) its staff.
No way I am judging the company, meaning Joyent. But Samsung Electronics owns them, so what I expect is they realise they sit on a goldmine of talent, and if Joyent products are not doing well then they reinvest that talent in something else.
Yes, it is. But sometimes you've just got to start shutting these things down if they're not going very well.
I guess Oxide will be picking up some more people.
Interesting that he throws MongoDB under the bus. I’ve heard a lot of negativity about them lately.
lately? MDB has always been awful. Then again i did work at the largest MDB deployment (per MDB themselves) so saw all the problems.
Technical problems or commercial?
> I feel like I was just starting to ease into my all-night rager as an illumos kernel developer, only to have 5-0 break it up before I could jump off the roof into the pool.
I was surprised at how appropriate and familiar this phrasing felt.
I was surprised at how appropriate and familiar this phrasing felt.
Very very few developers these days get to work on such low level stack. It just sounds very technically challenging yet fun. Wish him good luck to find something related in his next venture.
The mongoDB comment rings true at least from the past
Never heard of the OS mentioned
Never heard of the OS mentioned
> Never heard of the OS mentioned
I hope for your sake that this admission won’t cause you to be brutally downvoted too. Here’s a pre-emptive +1 ;)
I hope for your sake that this admission won’t cause you to be brutally downvoted too. Here’s a pre-emptive +1 ;)
Downvoted because I dared to point out that I had been downvoted elsewhere.
What is wrong with the denizens here nowadays??
What is wrong with the denizens here nowadays??
[deleted]
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
“Please” being the operative term in “please don’t – to be perfectly frank, if I see people behaving fanatically, I’m going to mention it. Elsewhere others beyond myself were downvoted for simply mentioning that they’d never heard of the OSes mentioned before. Is that deserving of downvoting? No. Am I going to stay quiet about it? Again, no. Do I care if I will be downvoted to hell and below? For the third time, no. I consider the behaviour of others to be far more rude – and such behaviour is on the rise. If it is hidden behind a rule that has the side-effect of making it impossible to call such behaviour out, I’m going to disregard that rule – as I am doing now.
Yes, Mongo was and is an absolute dumpster fire. But I am certain you must have heard of Solaris.
Did you ever try to use Riak though? I did - not a great api or developer experience; I can see why the norms wanted to use mongo...
SmartOS = open source Solaris, basically.
re: Design. This blog uses the Triplicate font, which is the only font I ever purchased if memory serves :-) [1]
1: https://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html
1: https://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html
It’s kind of risky to have programmers who feel so passionately opinionated about the software that should power a business.
It’s doubly tricky, because most companies pay lip service to passion. But like a chef that cares a bit too much about which cookware you use, it sometimes hinders the goal of serving 100 customers at noon.
I respect that they’ve created their entire networking stack from the ground up. Few can claim the same. But objectively, the less eyeballs on a piece of code, the more risk. What will the company do if they’re hit by a bus?
I’m not sure that companies should be measured in terms of “what if a dev suddenly goes away,” since creative work isn’t interchangeable like gears in a machine (nor would we want it to be). But it seems at least partly relevant.
The tradeoff is that if you use unpopular software, like lisp, you can often gain more leverage in specific situations. HN’s software is the most flexible codebase I’ve ever seen, but few have ever studied it deeply. Viaweb used those principles to dominate the competition at a time when everybody was writing websites in C. But are those days gone?
It might be an asset for a startup to use obscure software, so it’s definitely worth honing the skillset. I’m just not sure it’s a good idea to feel so strongly about business in particular. It has a way of burning you.
It’s doubly tricky, because most companies pay lip service to passion. But like a chef that cares a bit too much about which cookware you use, it sometimes hinders the goal of serving 100 customers at noon.
I respect that they’ve created their entire networking stack from the ground up. Few can claim the same. But objectively, the less eyeballs on a piece of code, the more risk. What will the company do if they’re hit by a bus?
I’m not sure that companies should be measured in terms of “what if a dev suddenly goes away,” since creative work isn’t interchangeable like gears in a machine (nor would we want it to be). But it seems at least partly relevant.
The tradeoff is that if you use unpopular software, like lisp, you can often gain more leverage in specific situations. HN’s software is the most flexible codebase I’ve ever seen, but few have ever studied it deeply. Viaweb used those principles to dominate the competition at a time when everybody was writing websites in C. But are those days gone?
It might be an asset for a startup to use obscure software, so it’s definitely worth honing the skillset. I’m just not sure it’s a good idea to feel so strongly about business in particular. It has a way of burning you.
> It’s kind of risky to have programmers who feel so passionately opinionated about the software that should power a business.
While you have a point in general, I don't think that was a primary reason for Joyent losing the "cloud wars". At the most you can say is that passionate engineering doesn't always lead to commercial success.
> I respect that they’ve created their entire networking stack from the ground up. Few can claim the same. But objectively, the less eyeballs on a piece of code, the more risk. What will the company do if they’re hit by a bus?
AFAICT, they didn't write their own network stack from the ground up but based it on OpenSolaris and many of the devs were former Sun employees. That's far from "write you own network stack". Joyent started in 2004, when Linux didn't have DTrace, containers, and likely didn't compare in networking performance, so it would've made a lot of sense to run a cloud startup on an OpenSolaris base. They also shared drivers and network code with IllumOS and other OpenSolaris forks. Not exactly a bus factor of 1.
Joyent was one of the first container companies, which were based on OpenSolaris Zones, but seem to have just missed the "Docker" container wave. That and Joyent never quite hit on the same developer-oriented Docker CLI and Dockerfiles otherwise, who knows what would have happened.
I still think of Zones as superior to Linux namcespaces/conainter setup in many aspects, much less back in the early 2012-2014 when containers were just becoming "a thing". Nowadays it's mute with AWS's Firecracker and CPU support for virtualization there's essentially no performance penalty for VM's like back in 2012.
While you have a point in general, I don't think that was a primary reason for Joyent losing the "cloud wars". At the most you can say is that passionate engineering doesn't always lead to commercial success.
> I respect that they’ve created their entire networking stack from the ground up. Few can claim the same. But objectively, the less eyeballs on a piece of code, the more risk. What will the company do if they’re hit by a bus?
AFAICT, they didn't write their own network stack from the ground up but based it on OpenSolaris and many of the devs were former Sun employees. That's far from "write you own network stack". Joyent started in 2004, when Linux didn't have DTrace, containers, and likely didn't compare in networking performance, so it would've made a lot of sense to run a cloud startup on an OpenSolaris base. They also shared drivers and network code with IllumOS and other OpenSolaris forks. Not exactly a bus factor of 1.
Joyent was one of the first container companies, which were based on OpenSolaris Zones, but seem to have just missed the "Docker" container wave. That and Joyent never quite hit on the same developer-oriented Docker CLI and Dockerfiles otherwise, who knows what would have happened.
I still think of Zones as superior to Linux namcespaces/conainter setup in many aspects, much less back in the early 2012-2014 when containers were just becoming "a thing". Nowadays it's mute with AWS's Firecracker and CPU support for virtualization there's essentially no performance penalty for VM's like back in 2012.
Actually IBM and Unisys were the first container companies.
The last couple of decades mainstream OSes have been catching up with mainframe world.
The last couple of decades mainstream OSes have been catching up with mainframe world.
> like a chef that cares a bit too much about which cookware you use, it sometimes hinders the goal of serving 100 customers at noon.
It puts me in mind of a line from the movie Gettysburg (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107007/?ref_=tt_ch). Robert E. Lee, explaining his decision to make a risky attack to one of his lieutenants, says “to be a good soldier, you must love the army. To be a good commander, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love.”
A business built around a particularly clever bit of code faces the same dilemma. To be a good programmer, you must love that code. But to be a good businessperson, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love.
It puts me in mind of a line from the movie Gettysburg (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107007/?ref_=tt_ch). Robert E. Lee, explaining his decision to make a risky attack to one of his lieutenants, says “to be a good soldier, you must love the army. To be a good commander, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love.”
A business built around a particularly clever bit of code faces the same dilemma. To be a good programmer, you must love that code. But to be a good businessperson, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love.
To be the best business man is to do good business without compromising your ethics. Aim to be the best.
It is indeed risky to give people with non-business allegiances product ownership - and as you say, it is all too tempting to lean into such passion. However, I believe the author has an infectious drive that I find an intangible benefit that outweighs the intangible downsides
As one of the first customers of Joyent (aka TextDrive) in 2004 who funded the company via a prepaid "lifetime" hosting account, I think you hit the nail on the head. The CTO was in love with Solaris, constantly waxing poetic in the forums about the next great technical idea he was implementing while the shared hosting we had prepaid for suffered constant downtime and technical problems. While I think they eventually sort of got their shit together (just based on outward appearances, they had long since burnt their bridge with me personally), it's really no surprise that they lacked the customer-centricity to succeed in the cloud wars.
That’s a potential issue for a startup. Joyent was acquired by Samsung. They could literally hire 100 top tier devs to shadow him with the money they dropped between the couch cushions. Getting hit by a bus wasn’t ever going to be an issue if it was ever a concern.
Yet they aren't doing that, they are laying people off. When you need to reduce personnel, losing out on an information silo is definitely a concern
That's on the people doing reduction though.
There should be an active policy of reduction information siloing that is active all the time, especially for a big corporation like that.
There should be an active policy of reduction information siloing that is active all the time, especially for a big corporation like that.
> It’s doubly tricky, because most companies pay lip service to passion. But like a chef that cares a bit too much about which cookware you use, it sometimes hinders the goal of serving 100 customers at noon.
Chefs that care deeply about cookware will either go one of two ways, flame out or Michelin star.
It's a hugely risky strategy but the pay off from staffing a business with people who care incredibly deeply is potentially very high as long as they're well managed. Early days Apple is probably one of the best examples of it, but Microsoft is probably the excellent counterpoint to that as well.
Chefs that care deeply about cookware will either go one of two ways, flame out or Michelin star.
It's a hugely risky strategy but the pay off from staffing a business with people who care incredibly deeply is potentially very high as long as they're well managed. Early days Apple is probably one of the best examples of it, but Microsoft is probably the excellent counterpoint to that as well.
How many of Joyent's struggles relate to having their own network stack?
None. I think. Not being Linux is a bigger problem.
> The tradeoff is that if you use unpopular software, like lisp, you can often gain more leverage in specific situations. HN’s software is the most flexible codebase I’ve ever seen, but few have ever studied it deeply. Viaweb used those principles to dominate the competition at a time when everybody was writing websites in C. But are those days gone?
In Paul Graham's days, Lisp was not as unpopular as it is today. It was more like choosing to use Ruby in 2020. On its way out but still in the public consciousness.
In Paul Graham's days, Lisp was not as unpopular as it is today. It was more like choosing to use Ruby in 2020. On its way out but still in the public consciousness.
LISP won't die until Autodesk says so.
Seriously, the AutoCAD community has some of the brightest (or, at least, most clever) developers I've ever met.
Seriously, the AutoCAD community has some of the brightest (or, at least, most clever) developers I've ever met.
Hmm. I think Viaweb was the first web application (or at least, no one's disputed that claim) and they kept their choice to use lisp a secret until acquisition. If someone else was using lisp to make websites, it seems like they must have independently rediscovered the idea.
It was started in 1995 and acquired in 1998, so that wasn't a very long time for lisp to come into the public consciousness. It seems like at best it was considered an AI research language.
It was started in 1995 and acquired in 1998, so that wasn't a very long time for lisp to come into the public consciousness. It seems like at best it was considered an AI research language.
Viaweb started a year after complex web applications were done, including White House information system using COMLINK system built on CL-HTTP (designed at Intelligent Information Infrastructure Project at MIT AI Lab).
I think I've also seen GUI apps exported over HTTP using clickable image maps and early tricks for streaming images.
Viaweb was one of the first "make your own shop" web applications, yes. Not first web application.
I think I've also seen GUI apps exported over HTTP using clickable image maps and early tricks for streaming images.
Viaweb was one of the first "make your own shop" web applications, yes. Not first web application.
As for Lisp - in computing circles, it was very big name, at least in places that weren't on the low-end side. The Second AI Winter was at the time heavily kicking it by association, and big name companies had just went under (Symbolics, TI shuttering Explorer line, etc.)
No one was making web applications with anything. The consumer-facing web was still in its infancy.
> It was started in 1995 and acquired in 1998, so that wasn't a very long time for lisp to come into the public consciousness
Lisp was the only game in town other than C for multiple decades. Absolutely everyone learned it in university. It was the main garbage collected scripting language, like Python today.
> It was started in 1995 and acquired in 1998, so that wasn't a very long time for lisp to come into the public consciousness
Lisp was the only game in town other than C for multiple decades. Absolutely everyone learned it in university. It was the main garbage collected scripting language, like Python today.
During the 80's and 90's that place belongs to Basic dialects, not Lisp.
And when Viaweb came to be, there was also ML, Smalltalk, Perl and Tcl to choose from.
This if we focus only on the context of UNIX, because otherwise the language spectrum gets even wider.
And when Viaweb came to be, there was also ML, Smalltalk, Perl and Tcl to choose from.
This if we focus only on the context of UNIX, because otherwise the language spectrum gets even wider.
mychael(1)
Really happy Z got a chance to work at Joyent though, even if it was only for a few years.
For most of us ex-Basho (ie. Riak) engineers, Basho was a career highlight. We've mostly moved on to better paying, more stable jobs, but lost the magic / passion / joy that we had at Basho.
Ryan's the exception. I imagine he's loved his time at Joyent as much, if not more, than Basho.
Here's hoping lightning strikes for a third time and Ryan lands somewhere great after his winter break.