Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
321 comments
I came on board with the NeXT acquisition (or rather reverse acquisition as ex-NeXT often refer to)…
So I do recall seeing a few times after we relocated to Infinite Loop, that Steve at first was just working as a consultant, and not as an employee. Thus at the time he didn’t have a badge to enter in IL1 (Infinite Loop 1: hold Apple HQ); many times when he was coming in the morning, he had to wait at the glass door to enter the campus, until some kind soul was letting him in (despite the policy only badged employees could enter or visitors with a printed tag). I saw it happening more than once while grabbing a coffee at the coffee booth in the IL1 building.
Later on, after he came back officially as CEO (or iCEO), I remember clearly during a lunch with co-workers (at Café Mac, seating outside) watching at a distance Steve & Jony walking inside the campus, then seating at a bench and Jony opening some carrying case/luggage, and let Steve pull the content out of it, so he could look at it in the sun: it looked like a piece of plastic… at the time, we had no clue what it was, except the color was orange. Many months later, Steve introduced the first iBook (which was the first Mac with Wifi): when I saw the orange color of the iBook I made the connection with what we saw back that day; Jony was most likely showing to Steve the first shell of the future iBook.
Steve otherwise at work was truly laser focus at a time on different projects: I was working on backend web services development with public facing web site, so usually every 2 weeks our boss was presenting to Steve our progress (every week or even more while closer to ship): our boss usually was always coming back with clear feedback on what was good or terrible, which we obviously had to improve for the next presentation… stressful yes, but truly enjoyable. More than once, Steve did cut some projects that were close to finish and you just had to go along since no one had a say in it, except Steve.
Obviously I have a few more stories of that sort, since I spent close to 20 years at Apple (/NeXT).
It was quite something to get the hard work you did for months presented on stage by Steve… I still miss the excitement from it even if it is more than 15 years ago.
Edit: fixing a few typos
So I do recall seeing a few times after we relocated to Infinite Loop, that Steve at first was just working as a consultant, and not as an employee. Thus at the time he didn’t have a badge to enter in IL1 (Infinite Loop 1: hold Apple HQ); many times when he was coming in the morning, he had to wait at the glass door to enter the campus, until some kind soul was letting him in (despite the policy only badged employees could enter or visitors with a printed tag). I saw it happening more than once while grabbing a coffee at the coffee booth in the IL1 building.
Later on, after he came back officially as CEO (or iCEO), I remember clearly during a lunch with co-workers (at Café Mac, seating outside) watching at a distance Steve & Jony walking inside the campus, then seating at a bench and Jony opening some carrying case/luggage, and let Steve pull the content out of it, so he could look at it in the sun: it looked like a piece of plastic… at the time, we had no clue what it was, except the color was orange. Many months later, Steve introduced the first iBook (which was the first Mac with Wifi): when I saw the orange color of the iBook I made the connection with what we saw back that day; Jony was most likely showing to Steve the first shell of the future iBook.
Steve otherwise at work was truly laser focus at a time on different projects: I was working on backend web services development with public facing web site, so usually every 2 weeks our boss was presenting to Steve our progress (every week or even more while closer to ship): our boss usually was always coming back with clear feedback on what was good or terrible, which we obviously had to improve for the next presentation… stressful yes, but truly enjoyable. More than once, Steve did cut some projects that were close to finish and you just had to go along since no one had a say in it, except Steve.
Obviously I have a few more stories of that sort, since I spent close to 20 years at Apple (/NeXT).
It was quite something to get the hard work you did for months presented on stage by Steve… I still miss the excitement from it even if it is more than 15 years ago.
Edit: fixing a few typos
The one that sticks with me was the demo to the engineering team of "Aqua". A small team had been developing the new "lickable" user interface that was called Aqua. Before the release of OS X with the new UI, Jobs assembled the engineers that worked on the OS that would be tasked with carrying the UI throughout with their frameworks/apps.
In typical Steve fashion he had a slide-preso for the reveal. He began with a kind of simplified history of the computer user-interface: starting with the command-line. His next slide showed the graphical user interface popularized, surprise, by his earlier Apple Macintosh.
The NeXt slide (ha ha) showed, perhaps unsurprisingly, the NeXT user interface. A "boo" from one of the engineers in the crowd.
Jobs froze and the showman tone of his voice was gone, "Who said that? Who booed?" He was clearly enraged. He stared into the audience, scanning the faces of the engineers. I think he followed that with some expletives and a claim that the NeXT UI was an amazing step in UI design but I was still kind of in shock myself.
In typical Steve fashion he had a slide-preso for the reveal. He began with a kind of simplified history of the computer user-interface: starting with the command-line. His next slide showed the graphical user interface popularized, surprise, by his earlier Apple Macintosh.
The NeXt slide (ha ha) showed, perhaps unsurprisingly, the NeXT user interface. A "boo" from one of the engineers in the crowd.
Jobs froze and the showman tone of his voice was gone, "Who said that? Who booed?" He was clearly enraged. He stared into the audience, scanning the faces of the engineers. I think he followed that with some expletives and a claim that the NeXT UI was an amazing step in UI design but I was still kind of in shock myself.
When I came back to Apple in 2000, I remember walking to visit a friend from Eazel (John Harper) who was working on CoreAnimation and seeing your office. I was totally star struck, way more than having to deal with Steve every week. I mean, you are the guy who wrote Glider!
Ha ha, and Harper is a fucking rock star. He's a quiet guy but I recall chatting with him once about music — I thought it was awesome that he was into Elliott Smith.
> More than once, Steve did cut some projects that were close to finish and you just had to go along since no one had a say in it, except Steve.
You know, this is actually a rather good thing. So many companies are just bloated with projects that they want to see through just to see them through and they make zero sense in the grand scheme of the company. If you have a single person responsible for everything that can just make the hard choices and be the bad guy it is much more healthy for the whole....assuming that person cuts the right things and makes the right choices.
You know, this is actually a rather good thing. So many companies are just bloated with projects that they want to see through just to see them through and they make zero sense in the grand scheme of the company. If you have a single person responsible for everything that can just make the hard choices and be the bad guy it is much more healthy for the whole....assuming that person cuts the right things and makes the right choices.
This is why Sundar is a nice guy but shit CEO.
Well he did cut Stadia, which had a sizable team working on it.
The fact that Stadia even launched was a failure.
The most basic of market research would tell you that in gaming, content is king. And with Google's track record of cancelling products, nobody would trust what they offered even if it was vastly technically superior.
The most basic of market research would tell you that in gaming, content is king. And with Google's track record of cancelling products, nobody would trust what they offered even if it was vastly technically superior.
Not only content, go check GDC talks from Google.
While other platform vendors have technical stuff, some of it deep dives into their technology stack, Google's ones are mostly about Play Store, KPIs, and when technical, very superficial, where a blog post would be enough.
How can a studio thrust such company into having what it matters to launch a AAA tile, while being asked to rewrite for their platform.
While other platform vendors have technical stuff, some of it deep dives into their technology stack, Google's ones are mostly about Play Store, KPIs, and when technical, very superficial, where a blog post would be enough.
How can a studio thrust such company into having what it matters to launch a AAA tile, while being asked to rewrite for their platform.
Honestly, I don't know if that's a totally fair take. I purchased exactly one game on stadia and have zero regrets (particularly since I'm apparently getting a refund - but that's a bonus, really). I was definitely the target market and it was, in theory, the perfect product for me.
The only problem is I may have been the only person in the target market so that wasn't going to work financially... And even I was going to have an exceptionally low LTV at maybe one game purchase per year (or less). And if they charged a monthly subscription, I'd never do it. So, yeah, terrible business.
But Google's track record wasn't a showstopper for me on a toy. It's different for business stuff like GCP.
The only problem is I may have been the only person in the target market so that wasn't going to work financially... And even I was going to have an exceptionally low LTV at maybe one game purchase per year (or less). And if they charged a monthly subscription, I'd never do it. So, yeah, terrible business.
But Google's track record wasn't a showstopper for me on a toy. It's different for business stuff like GCP.
Stadia should either not have been released, or vastly better supported. Sundar took the middle route of saying yes to the idea, then letting the accountants run it into the ground. Worst of all worlds.
>This is why Sundar is a nice guy but shit CEO.
Sadly this was not the sentiment at the time when Google announced their new CEO.
Sadly this was not the sentiment at the time when Google announced their new CEO.
He’s a ghost, the company has zero vision.
Meta is a shitshow, but I’ll give Zuck credit for at least have A vision of *something*.
Sundars vision is to keep Larry and Sergei’s money machine humming along. That’s it. That’s the goal, cover the costs of the founders private islands by letting the CFO make all the real decisions
Meta is a shitshow, but I’ll give Zuck credit for at least have A vision of *something*.
Sundars vision is to keep Larry and Sergei’s money machine humming along. That’s it. That’s the goal, cover the costs of the founders private islands by letting the CFO make all the real decisions
I think there is a lot of interest in your stories, if you would be willing to write them down and post them back to HN.
> usually every 2 weeks our boss was presenting to Steve our progress (every week or even more while closer to ship): our boss usually was always coming back with clear feedback on what was good or terrible
I worked at Amazon for a bit and remember this kind of thing in preparation for a release/conference (Re:Invent). I don't miss it at all.
I worked at Amazon for a bit and remember this kind of thing in preparation for a release/conference (Re:Invent). I don't miss it at all.
I was there in 1999 as OS X was being developed, and the beta was just about to be released. I was building another product that was released at MacWorld in 2000 (and still exists today)!
I have a lot of funny stories. Steve didn't like our data center rack mounts being silver, we had to pull them all out and spray paint them black, because silver just wasn't acceptable, in a datacenter. That was my first day at work. And no, I'm not a datacenter employee, everyone on the team did everything, there were just very few of us.
We had to work from about 10am to about 3 or 4 am every day to make the deadline, we sometimes got Sundays off. There was a lot of rage and anger at many management levels.
Steve would get a question about a two button mouse at every company meeting, he was super pissed every time about the question. We enjoyed trolling him.
Steve's attention to detail was unbelievable. I once witnessed him make a team work overnight just to move an icon 10 pixels to the left.
The guy had a vision that seems unparalleled. He was able to figure out the concept of "cloud" well before its time, and make a shift towards that.
Of course, he was an supernatural presenter. I witnessed him present through some really messed up errors in live demos and no one I asked in the audience afterwards even noticed the errors.
It was an insane work environment, never seen anything like it.
I have a lot of funny stories. Steve didn't like our data center rack mounts being silver, we had to pull them all out and spray paint them black, because silver just wasn't acceptable, in a datacenter. That was my first day at work. And no, I'm not a datacenter employee, everyone on the team did everything, there were just very few of us.
We had to work from about 10am to about 3 or 4 am every day to make the deadline, we sometimes got Sundays off. There was a lot of rage and anger at many management levels.
Steve would get a question about a two button mouse at every company meeting, he was super pissed every time about the question. We enjoyed trolling him.
Steve's attention to detail was unbelievable. I once witnessed him make a team work overnight just to move an icon 10 pixels to the left.
The guy had a vision that seems unparalleled. He was able to figure out the concept of "cloud" well before its time, and make a shift towards that.
Of course, he was an supernatural presenter. I witnessed him present through some really messed up errors in live demos and no one I asked in the audience afterwards even noticed the errors.
It was an insane work environment, never seen anything like it.
Buried deep in this thread, ksec quoted Jobs: "When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
It's also analogous to a batter who doesn't stop his swing right after the moment he hits (or misses) the ball; he follows through. Because having the attitude of always following through, even when it seemingly no longer matters, increases the number and range of hits.
In response to the ksec's Jobs quote, maxbond said: "You're suggesting asking people to work into the night to make an aesthetic change that will benefit no customers, that will not make the workplace friendlier or more productive, and that you may never even lay eyes on again, is craftsmanship? I would suggest its authoritarian control for it's own sake."
The proof is in the pudding. Jobs exhibited extremely unusual, 1-in-10,000, seemingly odd, useless behavior in making the painting demand. Is it really nothing but pure coincidence that the same individual had the extremely unusual, 1-in-10,000 achievement of taking a company that was on its deathbed, arguably in its last throes, and turning it into one of the largest, most successful and influential companies in the world?
No, it is not. That doesn't mean it's worth it to the individual workers who had to do that work. Clearly, in many cases, including ksec's, it was not. But was it was worth it to the company and its shareholders? Yes.
It's also analogous to a batter who doesn't stop his swing right after the moment he hits (or misses) the ball; he follows through. Because having the attitude of always following through, even when it seemingly no longer matters, increases the number and range of hits.
In response to the ksec's Jobs quote, maxbond said: "You're suggesting asking people to work into the night to make an aesthetic change that will benefit no customers, that will not make the workplace friendlier or more productive, and that you may never even lay eyes on again, is craftsmanship? I would suggest its authoritarian control for it's own sake."
The proof is in the pudding. Jobs exhibited extremely unusual, 1-in-10,000, seemingly odd, useless behavior in making the painting demand. Is it really nothing but pure coincidence that the same individual had the extremely unusual, 1-in-10,000 achievement of taking a company that was on its deathbed, arguably in its last throes, and turning it into one of the largest, most successful and influential companies in the world?
No, it is not. That doesn't mean it's worth it to the individual workers who had to do that work. Clearly, in many cases, including ksec's, it was not. But was it was worth it to the company and its shareholders? Yes.
Object Lessons.
In his first public appearance after revealing he had surgery to remove a tumor from his pancreas in 2004, Jobs met with a handful of reporters at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif. to unveil a new 750-square-foot "mini" store design. Half the size of the typical Apple retail stores of the time, the mini design featured an all-white ceiling, lit from behind; Japanese-made stainless-steel walls, with holes around the top for ventilation that mimicked the design of the PowerMac G5; and a shiny, seamless white floor made with "material used in aircraft hangars," Jobs said at the time.
Before the gigantic curtain draped across the storefront came down, though, Jobs was having a meltdown, refusing in the minutes before the unveiling to step outside and greet reporters. Why? Because the store design that looked so great on paper didn't stand up to real-world use. The walls showed off every handprint and the floors were marred by black scuff marks from the handful of people readying the store for the big reveal.
Jobs was ultimately convinced to step outside, and the curtain was drawn before the small gathering of reporters. When I saw the floor, I immediately turned to Jobs, standing next to me, and asked if he had been involved in every aspect of the design. He said yes. "It was obvious that whoever designed the store had never cleaned a floor in their life," I told him. He narrowed his eyes at me and stepped inside.
A few months later an Apple executive told me that Jobs had all of the designers return to the store after it opened on Saturday, and spend the night on their hands and knees cleaning the white surface. After that, Apple switched the floors to the stone tiles now prevalent in its designs.
In his first public appearance after revealing he had surgery to remove a tumor from his pancreas in 2004, Jobs met with a handful of reporters at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif. to unveil a new 750-square-foot "mini" store design. Half the size of the typical Apple retail stores of the time, the mini design featured an all-white ceiling, lit from behind; Japanese-made stainless-steel walls, with holes around the top for ventilation that mimicked the design of the PowerMac G5; and a shiny, seamless white floor made with "material used in aircraft hangars," Jobs said at the time.
Before the gigantic curtain draped across the storefront came down, though, Jobs was having a meltdown, refusing in the minutes before the unveiling to step outside and greet reporters. Why? Because the store design that looked so great on paper didn't stand up to real-world use. The walls showed off every handprint and the floors were marred by black scuff marks from the handful of people readying the store for the big reveal.
Jobs was ultimately convinced to step outside, and the curtain was drawn before the small gathering of reporters. When I saw the floor, I immediately turned to Jobs, standing next to me, and asked if he had been involved in every aspect of the design. He said yes. "It was obvious that whoever designed the store had never cleaned a floor in their life," I told him. He narrowed his eyes at me and stepped inside.
A few months later an Apple executive told me that Jobs had all of the designers return to the store after it opened on Saturday, and spend the night on their hands and knees cleaning the white surface. After that, Apple switched the floors to the stone tiles now prevalent in its designs.
What a nightmare. Ick.
Very well summarized. This really captures the dilemma.
Did I mention every single Ethernet cable had to be cut to length and if any server moved all the cables had to be remade ? Lol. They finally hired a wiring company to do all that work because I think we all protested to programming during the night and cutting cables during the day or vice versa.
Did I mention every single Ethernet cable had to be cut to length and if any server moved all the cables had to be remade ? Lol. They finally hired a wiring company to do all that work because I think we all protested to programming during the night and cutting cables during the day or vice versa.
> The guy had a vision that seems unparalleled.
Yet, he asked a group of software developers to paint a data center rack mount because "it wasn't acceptable" and made people work until 3am (even though numerous studies state that this doesn't make people more productive). One can call him "visionary" all they want, but the work environment he created doesn't sound exactly utopian. Do the ends really justify the means?
Yet, he asked a group of software developers to paint a data center rack mount because "it wasn't acceptable" and made people work until 3am (even though numerous studies state that this doesn't make people more productive). One can call him "visionary" all they want, but the work environment he created doesn't sound exactly utopian. Do the ends really justify the means?
Hey, you don’t have to tell me, I quit immediately after the project, after bouts of both verbal and physical violence. I left likely tens of millions of future earnings behind as a result. But there’s simply no question that the guy was a visionary. I personally saw many other examples of crazy abusive behavior and I don’t believe the ends justify the means.
I just have to ask. What were some of the crazy things you have seen? Please don’t leave us hanging.
I've never worked in such an environment myself but I imagine it feels something like soldiers feel following a leader who feels like he knows what he's doing. It's the feeling of shared hardship and shared experience and it creates culture of driving to follow the leader.
I imagine Elon Musk (at least used to, not sure if he still does) cause the same experience in employees. That's the sense you get when you read books like "Liftoff" that document the early days of SpaceX.
I imagine Elon Musk (at least used to, not sure if he still does) cause the same experience in employees. That's the sense you get when you read books like "Liftoff" that document the early days of SpaceX.
I don't think people spray painting parts no one in the public will ever see feel like their leader is on the ball. They probably feel like they're at the whims of an unreasonable narcissist who can erase their weekend and generally make them miserable for no reason whatsoever.
“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
You're suggesting asking people to work into the night to make an aesthetic change that will benefit no customers, that will not make the workplace friendlier or more productive, and that you may never even lay eyes on again, is craftsmanship? I would suggest its authoritarian control for it's own sake. To make people work to your arbitrary and unknowable criteria for no other reason than to exercise your power over them and to make them understand that that is your arrangement together.
Additionally silver brackets aren't inferior, like plywood. This is more like the craftsman chewed you out for using Phillips screws instead of flatheads for your table, because the craftsman feels that Phillips are for bookcases and flatheads are for tables.
Additionally silver brackets aren't inferior, like plywood. This is more like the craftsman chewed you out for using Phillips screws instead of flatheads for your table, because the craftsman feels that Phillips are for bookcases and flatheads are for tables.
For many of it was a life long dream to work at Apple, and to work with Jobs, but it didn’t take long to see it was not healthy.
Well, it can be looked at in more ways than one. Maybe he was just a jerk, or perhaps he was giving an object lesson. Details matter and the boss was paying attention. You decide.
> You decide.
I did. Steve Jobs is survivorship bias at its finest. I've met and interviewed plenty of "detail orientated" bosses and not all of them create trillion dollar entities.
> Maybe he was just a jerk, or perhaps he was giving an object lesson.
1. There is no legitimate reason to make a server rack a different color.
2. Making people work until 3am isn't a lesson. It ignores all studies that suggest that depriving people of sleep makes them less productive.
Moving an icon 10 pixels...okay maybe I get it. There is some practical utility in that for an end-user and it teaches development teams the importance of why the details matter. However this is probably my biggest gripes with the stories about Jobs. My interpretation is that he was inconsistently diligent and was only detail orientated for "details matter" sake, but not always the right details.
I did. Steve Jobs is survivorship bias at its finest. I've met and interviewed plenty of "detail orientated" bosses and not all of them create trillion dollar entities.
> Maybe he was just a jerk, or perhaps he was giving an object lesson.
1. There is no legitimate reason to make a server rack a different color.
2. Making people work until 3am isn't a lesson. It ignores all studies that suggest that depriving people of sleep makes them less productive.
Moving an icon 10 pixels...okay maybe I get it. There is some practical utility in that for an end-user and it teaches development teams the importance of why the details matter. However this is probably my biggest gripes with the stories about Jobs. My interpretation is that he was inconsistently diligent and was only detail orientated for "details matter" sake, but not always the right details.
Well, moving an icon a few pixels is also a purely aesthetic choice, just like changing the color of your house, the thickness of a header bar on a web page, the color of your office walls, or the color of a server rack. As with all aesthetic choices, there is someone who will think there is "no legitimate reason" to make those changes. There is someone else who will disagree. And yes, many detail oriented bosses are not successful, but Jobs actually did create a trillion dollar entity so I think this is more than just a survivorship bias. But he's controversial, so I get it if you disagree.
> moving an icon a few pixels is also a purely aesthetic choice
It's not. Aesthetics are actually a design principle: "Beautiful products/objects are perceived as easier to use and more valuable than ugly ones. Even if it is not true!" Since no one is actively looking at server racks there is no opportunity for the color to even play a factor.
> And yes, many detail oriented bosses are not successful, but Jobs actually did create a trillion dollar entity so I think this is more than just a survivorship bias.
Huh? You literally just defined survivorship bias. If only one party (Jobs) survives a large party ("many detailed oriented bosses"), then that's a survivor, and you're bias to thinking that would led that party to success is because of the same characteristics as the others that didn't.
[0] - https://uxdesign.cc/design-principle-aesthetics-af926f8f86fe
It's not. Aesthetics are actually a design principle: "Beautiful products/objects are perceived as easier to use and more valuable than ugly ones. Even if it is not true!" Since no one is actively looking at server racks there is no opportunity for the color to even play a factor.
> And yes, many detail oriented bosses are not successful, but Jobs actually did create a trillion dollar entity so I think this is more than just a survivorship bias.
Huh? You literally just defined survivorship bias. If only one party (Jobs) survives a large party ("many detailed oriented bosses"), then that's a survivor, and you're bias to thinking that would led that party to success is because of the same characteristics as the others that didn't.
[0] - https://uxdesign.cc/design-principle-aesthetics-af926f8f86fe
> Steve didn't like our data center rack mounts being silver, we had to pull them all out and spray paint them black, because silver just wasn't acceptable, in a datacenter.
This strikes me as funny because of all the canonically silver iMacs and Macbooks that came afterward. Is black even an option?
This strikes me as funny because of all the canonically silver iMacs and Macbooks that came afterward. Is black even an option?
Steve loved black, until he loved glossy pastels, then rich Corinthian leather interfaces and then brushed aluminum. This was one of the most very frustrating things about designing user interfaces for him; once you figured out his internal design language, he would radically change it overnight!
Somewhere in Steve logic somethings are black, somethings are silver, that's just the way it is.
I think this is a huge part of his success. That clarity makes buying simpler for customers. You get the color that your device is supposed to be. Period.
Boy have times changed
Now there are, what, six iPads? Not sure how people decide on anything not the cheapest or most expensive. There are four “middle” options.
The techspec page for the product is buried on the Apple Store app. Personalities such as MKBHD on YT is who I rely on to figure out what the product is targetted at.
You ain't kidding. Jobs gave people the choice of good, better, or best. That was it. 3 options and you probably already knew which one you were walking out with.
Now my iPhone is gray and my charger is white. What happened?!
With SJ gone Apple returned to the organization without taste driven by The Economist orthodoxy.
Yeah, not to mention silver Xserves ("RackMacs").
Now I’m actually curious what the errors where that never got noticed.
I’m sure the keynotes today will never have an error again, save a media server dying mid transcode and even then I’d expect there to be backups.
I’m sure the keynotes today will never have an error again, save a media server dying mid transcode and even then I’d expect there to be backups.
Jobs was a believer in the live demo. So when he was demoing a new product, the app actually crashed mid demo. He was so seamless in his delivery, it was like the audience was hypnotized.
> I was building another product that was released at MacWorld in 2000 (and still exists today)!
Wow! What was the product?
Wow! What was the product?
iTools, or as it's known today, iCloud. It was supposed to be a dial-up service, if you can wrap your head around that. But halfway through the project he realized that doesn't make sense and pivoted. A timely, brilliant move.
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So what was his problem with two button mice anyway?
Too confusing for a first-time computer user or a small child.
Having two small kids myself, I agree one button would be better for learning.
Having two small kids myself, I agree one button would be better for learning.
Except it gives rise to double-click, triple-click, shift-click, command-click, option-click, etc.
Double-click was always easy to teach, to my knowledge there isn’t a triple-click. There wasn’t command-click until OSX.
OS X has been around for 21 years. Many readers of hacker news aren’t that old yet.
Triple click is only a thing on iOS, apparently. Thank you for the correction: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204390
Double click is easy to teach but it’s sure as hell not discoverable. Whereas second and middle button advocates have, to me, semi convincingly claimed that they could also be taught through consistent application. In other words, not better but not worse.
Triple click is only a thing on iOS, apparently. Thank you for the correction: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204390
Double click is easy to teach but it’s sure as hell not discoverable. Whereas second and middle button advocates have, to me, semi convincingly claimed that they could also be taught through consistent application. In other words, not better but not worse.
I'm really thankful I had a chance to work at 1 Infinite Loop during that time. I worked with other Developer Relations folks in IL3, with near-daily trips to IL2 to either meet with folks on the QuickTime team or just hang out. Occasionally I'd get early glimpses at things like QTi and HyperCard 3.
I vividly recall the day Steve introduced the iMac in the Infinite Loop quad. If I had to pick a day that telegraphed Apple's future fortunes, it would be that day. Rhapsody's potential was compelling, but as Macintosh OS it was still pretty Crapsody at the time. The iMac was a Real Thing — as friendly as computers get, that only Apple could've created and sold.
I vividly recall the day Steve introduced the iMac in the Infinite Loop quad. If I had to pick a day that telegraphed Apple's future fortunes, it would be that day. Rhapsody's potential was compelling, but as Macintosh OS it was still pretty Crapsody at the time. The iMac was a Real Thing — as friendly as computers get, that only Apple could've created and sold.
The world needs to know more about HyperCard 3. I wish some kind person would throw a development version up online for us plebs to explore. It would be great to know and see what it was going to be all about!
I couldn't agree more. HyperCard changed the world, and it's a tragedy that it was abandoned.
The idea that QuickTime¹ would be the runtime for HyperCard 3² — or from a different perspective, that HyperCard stacks would be just another media type — was extremely clever. We'd³ previously experimented with specific interactive functionality, but QTi generalized interactive media capabilities in a technically-interesting way that would greatly amplify both what HyperCard and what QuickTime were capable of.
The 1996 WWDC session Hypercard 3.0: The Phoenix Rises was electric. Here's a report from that session, complete with a response from the awesome Kevin Calhoun. http://folkstream.com/muse/teachhc/hc3.html
> It would be great to know and see what it was going to be all about!
From an authoring POV, it was "just" HyperCard with super-powers. But from a distribution POV, the magic was that stacks would work anywhere that Movies worked — web pages, email, documents, applications (imagine GUIs composed of "micro-stack" controls), etc.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime#QuickTime_interactiv... ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard#HyperCard_3.0 ³ Royal "we", my specific role was evangelism
The idea that QuickTime¹ would be the runtime for HyperCard 3² — or from a different perspective, that HyperCard stacks would be just another media type — was extremely clever. We'd³ previously experimented with specific interactive functionality, but QTi generalized interactive media capabilities in a technically-interesting way that would greatly amplify both what HyperCard and what QuickTime were capable of.
The 1996 WWDC session Hypercard 3.0: The Phoenix Rises was electric. Here's a report from that session, complete with a response from the awesome Kevin Calhoun. http://folkstream.com/muse/teachhc/hc3.html
> It would be great to know and see what it was going to be all about!
From an authoring POV, it was "just" HyperCard with super-powers. But from a distribution POV, the magic was that stacks would work anywhere that Movies worked — web pages, email, documents, applications (imagine GUIs composed of "micro-stack" controls), etc.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime#QuickTime_interactiv... ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard#HyperCard_3.0 ³ Royal "we", my specific role was evangelism
> The 1996 WWDC session Hypercard 3.0: The Phoenix Rises was electric. Here's a report from that session, complete with a response from the awesome Kevin Calhoun. http://folkstream.com/muse/teachhc/hc3.html
Makes me sad to read this!
Makes me sad to read this!
I'm still hoping that some hero out there has a copy of HyperCard 3 alpha on a computer somewhere, and might be willing to upload it...
I was a T.Rbbt back in the SF Bay Area, over a decade ago, in the early wild west days of the "gig economy;" one of my first gigs was to "throw away a bunch of old electronics." As a diehard Apple fanboy, since 1991, I was excited for even the opportunity to throw away old history (knowing nothing more than "old electronics").
Upon showing up to a nice top-floor suite near Delores Park, I knew immediately that these would be nicer "old electronics" — turns out it was a BUNCH of PROTOTYPE Apple Computers (no "LISA," but plenty of history and unique items, given their hacked-together nature); 'WOZ literally had his hands on at least ONE of these,' I remember thinking; 'CERTAINLY!'
I mistakenly told the disposer of this "old electronics" just how cool all this HISTORY was, to which he immediately realized that I wasn't going to be throwing any of it away. Needless to say, he accompanied me to the junkyard as we both watched Apple History get run over by a skidsteer.
Just tragic. PS T.R. sucks - gfkt Leah!
Upon showing up to a nice top-floor suite near Delores Park, I knew immediately that these would be nicer "old electronics" — turns out it was a BUNCH of PROTOTYPE Apple Computers (no "LISA," but plenty of history and unique items, given their hacked-together nature); 'WOZ literally had his hands on at least ONE of these,' I remember thinking; 'CERTAINLY!'
I mistakenly told the disposer of this "old electronics" just how cool all this HISTORY was, to which he immediately realized that I wasn't going to be throwing any of it away. Needless to say, he accompanied me to the junkyard as we both watched Apple History get run over by a skidsteer.
Just tragic. PS T.R. sucks - gfkt Leah!
T.Rbbt
Task Rabbit?
Task Rabbit?
Yes. One of the more memorable things that happened went on when I moved my office to Infinite Loop. Steve Jobs was curious about everything, so he would walk the halls, knock on doors, introduce himself "Hi. I'm Steve Jobs." And then ask about what people were working on. I was jealous as I would have loved to point out the biggest challenges we were dealing with in the hope of getting more resources. To my astonishment essentialy every Apple employee in this position objected "You can't ask me that!" And then quit the next day. It was genuinely bizarre to witness this.
Steve Jobs comes by and every employee tells him that he can't ask what they're working on and they all quit the next day? That sounds a little hyperbolic.
Admittedly I only saw Steve doing this like two or three times. The group that was next to mine was not large and was gone in about a week. Heard similar stories from others who observed Steve Jobs randomly talking to people who then left and also heard some of these people talking about these events. Morale was very low in many groups at that time and a lot of people working there had quite remarkable egos.
Doesn't it seem more likely that the CEO (or proto-CEO, you didn't clarify what time period this was) fired these people after they were uncooperative in these informal talks?
On at least one occasion an employee posted on an internal discussion board that they were offended and quit out of what they considered basic defense of dignity and protocol. In terms of the whole group being gone in a week? Sure, at least one of those people were probably fired. I was really busy at this time so this is a highly subjective recollection based on my point of view and my interactions with others in person and on the highly active employee message boards.
To be clear then, it wasn't "essentialy every Apple employee in this position", it was one person who posted on a message board.
The Apple employees who I observed encountering Steve Jobs this way all left the next day and at some spoke about this with others and one posted on an internal message board about their experience. Did Steve Jobs attend all the tens of thousands of Apple employees in this way? Probably not. That this happened once seems remarkable. I'm sorry my attempt to recall colorful moments triggered this reactive detective thing in you. To me it seems that trying to present this is worth this risk of misunderstanding. It was a strange time.
So the people that were being interviewed by Jobs quit after he asked what they were doing? Or were there others hired to walk around and gather information that quit after interviewing employees? In either case, why were they quitting?
I was at Claris (subsidiary of Apple at the time, my paychecks were from Apple) up in Portland right before then.
Everyone in the office was really excited about the BeOS (edit, not Steve Jobs, but a new company by former Apple employees). We had a few devices. I remember the demos where they would click on a button to turn off a processor in the GUI while rendering a mandelbrot image, and it would slow to a crawl. It was such a pretty UI.
The story of the entire team for Claris quitting six months before they tried to release Claris 5 was recently documented on HN here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32271139
I was an intern the prior summer, and they called me when the team quit to join under a co-op at University of Washington and try to release the software.
Everyone was operating on a schedule that had bonuses tied to them. We hit the middle milestone and they got their bonuses.
Since I was only a co-op and not really a full fledged employee (even though I was there with the team until 11 pm on lots of Saturday nights) they didn't give me a bonus. They gave me a leather satchel with Claris Works written on it.
It was one of the most awkward moments in my life, the rest of the team looked mortified that we were at a fancy dinner and they were receiving big 5 figure checks and I was getting a recycled piece of swag. That probably speaks to the culture at Apple at the time.
I didn't really care. As a college student at the time, I thought I was as rich as I would ever get making an annualized $32k. After my internship where I was basically playing basketball in between two hours of coding, I thought the exit interview would be "You were the worst intern ever and we hope we never see you again." But, they hired me back and it was a fun time.
Everyone in the office was really excited about the BeOS (edit, not Steve Jobs, but a new company by former Apple employees). We had a few devices. I remember the demos where they would click on a button to turn off a processor in the GUI while rendering a mandelbrot image, and it would slow to a crawl. It was such a pretty UI.
The story of the entire team for Claris quitting six months before they tried to release Claris 5 was recently documented on HN here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32271139
I was an intern the prior summer, and they called me when the team quit to join under a co-op at University of Washington and try to release the software.
Everyone was operating on a schedule that had bonuses tied to them. We hit the middle milestone and they got their bonuses.
Since I was only a co-op and not really a full fledged employee (even though I was there with the team until 11 pm on lots of Saturday nights) they didn't give me a bonus. They gave me a leather satchel with Claris Works written on it.
It was one of the most awkward moments in my life, the rest of the team looked mortified that we were at a fancy dinner and they were receiving big 5 figure checks and I was getting a recycled piece of swag. That probably speaks to the culture at Apple at the time.
I didn't really care. As a college student at the time, I thought I was as rich as I would ever get making an annualized $32k. After my internship where I was basically playing basketball in between two hours of coding, I thought the exit interview would be "You were the worst intern ever and we hope we never see you again." But, they hired me back and it was a fun time.
> Everyone in the office was really excited about the BeOS (Steve Jobs' new company before he returned to Apple).
Are you sure it wasn't NeXT that you're thinking of?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#History
Are you sure it wasn't NeXT that you're thinking of?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#History
I didn't work there, but for all you old-timers, I attended the Brass Ring job fair at the Santa Clara convention center, early 1997 before Jobs rejoined.
I distinctly remember the Apple recruitment booth was empty, vs all of the high-activity booths around them. I remember it vividly because it was sad seeing how far they had fallen, people weren't interested in even talking to the recruiter.
Imagine getting a job at Apple in 1997 and never selling a share. I know some people that have been at Apple for 12+ years and are planning on retiring next year, they are multi-multi-millionaires just from regular stock grants.
I distinctly remember the Apple recruitment booth was empty, vs all of the high-activity booths around them. I remember it vividly because it was sad seeing how far they had fallen, people weren't interested in even talking to the recruiter.
Imagine getting a job at Apple in 1997 and never selling a share. I know some people that have been at Apple for 12+ years and are planning on retiring next year, they are multi-multi-millionaires just from regular stock grants.
Some stories I’ve heard over the years when I was at Apple Retail. I cannot confirm or deny any of these are true and maybe someone here can corroborate them.
- employees used to steal Steve’s license plates as a joke so that’s why he was always leasing cars. The maximum grace period for getting plates was six months so he’d change Mercedes every six months.
- Steve used to park in the handicap spot up front at IL1.
- there was gourmet chocolate milk for Steve stashed in the back of refrigerators at Cafe Macs. Yes I know he was vegan but I questioned the story as well. Apparently it was a secret indulgence only a few knew about.
- he had his own connection from PAIX (Palo Alto Internet Exchange) to his house.
- he had his own mail server at Apple.
- an employee with the corporate email steve@ before Steve’s return was asked to give up his email address for Steve.
- Steve had his own personal IS&T person to go to his house or work on things for him. On average they lasted a few months before Steve asked that tech be fired (for whatever reason), and HR just shuffled them somewhere else in the company.
- if you were in an elevator with Steve after coming back from a smoke break, you were likely in deep shit and probably out of a job.
I remember using an old company directory tool app for employees and looking up Steve. It said he report to Woz. When you looked up Woz, it said he reported to Steve.
- employees used to steal Steve’s license plates as a joke so that’s why he was always leasing cars. The maximum grace period for getting plates was six months so he’d change Mercedes every six months.
- Steve used to park in the handicap spot up front at IL1.
- there was gourmet chocolate milk for Steve stashed in the back of refrigerators at Cafe Macs. Yes I know he was vegan but I questioned the story as well. Apparently it was a secret indulgence only a few knew about.
- he had his own connection from PAIX (Palo Alto Internet Exchange) to his house.
- he had his own mail server at Apple.
- an employee with the corporate email steve@ before Steve’s return was asked to give up his email address for Steve.
- Steve had his own personal IS&T person to go to his house or work on things for him. On average they lasted a few months before Steve asked that tech be fired (for whatever reason), and HR just shuffled them somewhere else in the company.
- if you were in an elevator with Steve after coming back from a smoke break, you were likely in deep shit and probably out of a job.
I remember using an old company directory tool app for employees and looking up Steve. It said he report to Woz. When you looked up Woz, it said he reported to Steve.
The best reading on that period I'm aware of is the Jim Carleton book "Apple". He's a WSJ reporter who was covering the company at the time and the book covers the period ending around when Jobs returned but before he stepped in as CEO. The thing I find most interesting about that book is it was written without being tainted by knowledge of the company's later resurgence. It provides a really different take than anything written much later. I didn't care for Walter Isaacson's book much, he injects too much of his own opinion into things and besides being obnoxious I don't think his calibration on the business is very good.
I have the Carlton book; beware that it is chock full of inaccuracies -- I don't recommend it. Gil Amelio's book ("On the Firing Line"?) is better.
Isaacson's book is like the notes one takes before writing the actual book -- a starting point, but very incomplete and there's no center to it. If you want to read a Jobs biography that is good -- but does not pull punches -- "Becoming Steve Jobs" is the one to get.
Isaacson's book is like the notes one takes before writing the actual book -- a starting point, but very incomplete and there's no center to it. If you want to read a Jobs biography that is good -- but does not pull punches -- "Becoming Steve Jobs" is the one to get.
Do you have a link to the book? Googling "Jim Carleton apple book" doesn't turn up anything (although your comment is already now ranked #3 for that search query!)
Maybe that's the book? (by Jim Carlton):
https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Jim-Carlton/dp/0887309658
https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Jim-Carlton/dp/0887309658
Try "Jim Carlton", sans the 'e'.
I was at Apple 2006-2010 and worked with many who were there during SJ's return. It was drastic in both product and headcount cuts.[1] SJ was many things but above all, he was feared.
[1] roughly 1/3 of the company https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/08/29/1997-apple-bites-the-...
[1] roughly 1/3 of the company https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/08/29/1997-apple-bites-the-...
I recall people of that era wondering why the guy who created NeXT, a cool idea with zero commercial success, was so arrogant as to think he knew how to make a winning product.
What I don't think a lot of people knew at the time was the hand Jobs played in the birth of Pixar, which is definitely something to be cocky about.
One of my coworkers decided he was going to specialize in ObjectiveC, because yes the jobs were rare but they paid a premium. This was before Apple started talking to BeOS and NeXT about an acquisition, so I thought he was crazy.
When the iPhone came out and mobile apps became a gold rush, I spent a lot of time wondering where he was now and whether he had a Scrooge McDuck room to swim in his money.
What I don't think a lot of people knew at the time was the hand Jobs played in the birth of Pixar, which is definitely something to be cocky about.
One of my coworkers decided he was going to specialize in ObjectiveC, because yes the jobs were rare but they paid a premium. This was before Apple started talking to BeOS and NeXT about an acquisition, so I thought he was crazy.
When the iPhone came out and mobile apps became a gold rush, I spent a lot of time wondering where he was now and whether he had a Scrooge McDuck room to swim in his money.
He was also there for the Apple I & II, and Mac. His arrogance was understandable, especially in how it floundered in his absence.
Having that outside experience likely shaped him to shine in his second go around.
Having that outside experience likely shaped him to shine in his second go around.
Now we are in LinkedIn era, it is easy to find out what are old coworkers doing
I feel like the Isaacson bio is fairly accurate factually on that time, from what I knew as a senior SW Eng at NeXT/Apple. It was a huge course change, eventually pushed through the entire software org by Steve, the NeXT leadership and a set of Apple folks that chose to embrace the new direction.
If you've not seen it, this video of Job' informal talk with WWDC attendees in 1997 is a classic. At the time he was only consulting at Apple after the Next acquisition and Gil Amelio was still at the helm. He talks quite a bit about how the company is re-engineering itself and refocusing on a narrower set of products, and deals constructively with some pretty hardball questions from the audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyd0tP0SK6o&t=1086s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyd0tP0SK6o&t=1086s
Is this the one with the loaded question/insult from an audience member about deprecating a framework? Cause I agree that Apple has been too developer-hostile on Mac OS for a very long time, even though I'm mostly on the user side (but have also done a little Mac dev). They unnecessarily break third-party software too often, to the point where many devs have given up on proper Mac support and just thrown things into an Electron app. Maybe the guy in the audience was right.
No, you can't really draw that line from 1997 to today's Apple.
(a) Deprecation of a framework is inaccurate. It was halting development on OpenDoc -- which had been sold as the future of software development on Macs and other OS's up to that point (sort of, you had to be there). There is no modern parallel; Apple halting all development on UIKit and removing support and tools for it tomorrow would be something like it.
(b) Steve said in the video that the guy in the audience might be right. But he also said that Apple had to focus to survive.
Apple just barely made it -- remember that while the iMac was a design masterpiece, it wasn't that big compared to the rest of the industry; Apple was still essentially fighting for its life with every hardware release until the iPod.
(a) Deprecation of a framework is inaccurate. It was halting development on OpenDoc -- which had been sold as the future of software development on Macs and other OS's up to that point (sort of, you had to be there). There is no modern parallel; Apple halting all development on UIKit and removing support and tools for it tomorrow would be something like it.
(b) Steve said in the video that the guy in the audience might be right. But he also said that Apple had to focus to survive.
Apple just barely made it -- remember that while the iMac was a design masterpiece, it wasn't that big compared to the rest of the industry; Apple was still essentially fighting for its life with every hardware release until the iPod.
Somewhere there is a video of me presenting at a WWDC keynote related to OpenDoc, and I was young and unprepared and spoke too fast. I’m glad that not everything is easily accessible online.
[deleted]
Thanks for the insight. As you can maybe tell, this was happening soon after I was born. I got into computers at an early age, and it was 90s hand-me-down stuff, so I got vague exposure to the old state of things.
That one was so funny. He may have been right, but Apple’s chess moves speak for themselves. They’ve built one of the most valuable companies in history.
I don't think the deprecation-happy policy helped them. I think they succeeded in spite of that because they made products that were great on their own. The iMac, iPod, and iPhone were so user-friendly, and that's orthogonal to the Mac dev experience.
Also, iPhone OS was actually a great dev platform unlike Mac OS, which facilitated a huge app ecosystem at least initially (nowadays apps are less of a thing). People have their complaints, but it's a paradise compared to creating Mac apps because there aren't too many wrong ways to do something, the OS handles a lot more for you, and initially it was a gold rush because of how readily you could profit from making apps. It became standard for everything to have an iPhone app.
Macs, on the other hand, always suffered from a lack of third-party software. Eventually it began to matter less cause of web stuff, but it's still an issue.
Also, iPhone OS was actually a great dev platform unlike Mac OS, which facilitated a huge app ecosystem at least initially (nowadays apps are less of a thing). People have their complaints, but it's a paradise compared to creating Mac apps because there aren't too many wrong ways to do something, the OS handles a lot more for you, and initially it was a gold rush because of how readily you could profit from making apps. It became standard for everything to have an iPhone app.
Macs, on the other hand, always suffered from a lack of third-party software. Eventually it began to matter less cause of web stuff, but it's still an issue.
I think the post-OS-X Mac dev experience varies a good deal depending on the type of software you're making.
Are you building a Mac-first app using the most blessed toolkit (Cocoa)? You're probably fine, so long as you're not looking to toss out a binary and forget about it for 5+ years (periodically recompiling with newer SDKs and such). Even 20 years down the road getting old FOSS Cocoa projects building and running again isn't too hard, because even though there are a lot of deprecations the deprecated stuff largely still works.
On the other hand if you're building lowest common denominator cross platform desktop apps, yeah life might be harder. Same for games. That said I think the bulk of this pain comes from making assumptions that an unavoidably changing world will remain static — the sort of backwards compatibility provided by Microsoft is really the exception not the rule, and even there it's starting to flake away likely because the teams at MS are growing tired of having nearly unbounded backwards compatibility act as a ball and chain on OS development.
For running apps that were created without their devs' intent of long-term maintenance I think the best thing is probably third party compatibility layers like WINE, which allow for a pinned API target without locking OS vendors into decades old decisions and emergences.
Are you building a Mac-first app using the most blessed toolkit (Cocoa)? You're probably fine, so long as you're not looking to toss out a binary and forget about it for 5+ years (periodically recompiling with newer SDKs and such). Even 20 years down the road getting old FOSS Cocoa projects building and running again isn't too hard, because even though there are a lot of deprecations the deprecated stuff largely still works.
On the other hand if you're building lowest common denominator cross platform desktop apps, yeah life might be harder. Same for games. That said I think the bulk of this pain comes from making assumptions that an unavoidably changing world will remain static — the sort of backwards compatibility provided by Microsoft is really the exception not the rule, and even there it's starting to flake away likely because the teams at MS are growing tired of having nearly unbounded backwards compatibility act as a ball and chain on OS development.
For running apps that were created without their devs' intent of long-term maintenance I think the best thing is probably third party compatibility layers like WINE, which allow for a pinned API target without locking OS vendors into decades old decisions and emergences.
Many devs don't maintain their software the way you describe. I don't think they should need to.
If you look at what most software does, it's pretty static. Like you're telling the OS to draw windows with buttons and run your code in response to inputs. More complex with games, but still. The Mac user interface doesn't change much over time. The software should be a lot safer from OS changes. Microsoft showed that it's possible, and they even did it with third-party hardware. Same with the web. If Apple wanted compatibility with less burden, they could've provided better abstractions to devs. "Do things this one sanctioned way, and it won't break."
Mac OS was not good for games in the end. It was common for a minor OS release to break a good portion of your game library, sometimes permanently. If I understand correctly, Apple even intentionally let OpenGL go stale to push Metal instead. This was all on top of DirectX being Windows-only. Relying on WINE for an official software release is a kludge, and despite the common claim that it comes at no performance cost, somehow things tended to be much slower in it (not from the WINE translation layer itself but some other consequence of semi-incompatibility).
If you look at what most software does, it's pretty static. Like you're telling the OS to draw windows with buttons and run your code in response to inputs. More complex with games, but still. The Mac user interface doesn't change much over time. The software should be a lot safer from OS changes. Microsoft showed that it's possible, and they even did it with third-party hardware. Same with the web. If Apple wanted compatibility with less burden, they could've provided better abstractions to devs. "Do things this one sanctioned way, and it won't break."
Mac OS was not good for games in the end. It was common for a minor OS release to break a good portion of your game library, sometimes permanently. If I understand correctly, Apple even intentionally let OpenGL go stale to push Metal instead. This was all on top of DirectX being Windows-only. Relying on WINE for an official software release is a kludge, and despite the common claim that it comes at no performance cost, somehow things tended to be much slower in it (not from the WINE translation layer itself but some other consequence of semi-incompatibility).
A culture of deprecation certainly helped; you couldn't iMac without it (everyone raged about it not having a floppy drive).
And even so they support carbon or cocoa or whatever it was for longer than people expected.
And even so they support carbon or cocoa or whatever it was for longer than people expected.
They could have an iMac with a floppy drive. At the time, CDs were already popular enough, and external floppy drives were available. They didn't just drop the thing everyone's using.
They were nice sometimes, like with Rosetta (and v2).
They were nice sometimes, like with Rosetta (and v2).
A hardware example of when Apple dropped the thing everyone's using: The 2016 MacBook Pro forced a cutover to USB-C when it was at about 0% adoption, and it was a mess.
I think so, at ~50:22.
Anybody familiar with the Improv / Quantrix spreadsheets that he claims is 5X - 10X more productive than Excel? What's so special about them? Has that functionality found its way into Excel at this point?
Quantrix is still popular today for large financial modelling. The main advantage of Improv/Quantrix was that everything is named, and formulas are expressed as logical formulas, not references to spreadsheet columns, which makes the spreadsheets themselves more interpretable and readily auditable. If you're disciplined with named ranges, you can do a similar thing in Excel these days, but it doesn't really feel as natural as it did in Improv, and on a multi-person team with varying Excel skill levels it can be a challenge to maintain that discipline.
"Within a few months, Pito had come up with the fundamental idea at the core of Improv: that the raw data in a spreadsheet, the way that the user views the data, and the formulas used to perform calculations can all be separated from each other."
This is exactly what FileMaker Pro does.
You have the underlying data structure that is independent of calculations and presentation. It is sparse by definition, and can store far more data than any spreadsheet in existence. It can include defined relationships between the different kinds of data.
You have the calculations, that are stored with the data structure, but are functionally independent from it. They can transform, combine, and summarize the data in just about any way you like. They can store their results, increasing speed at the cost of storage, or they can be on demand.
You have the presentation, which depends on the data but is defined separately -- you can have as many different presentation forms as you like, hundreds or even thousands.
And you have actual code that can run on the data and validate it, modify it, organize it etc.
I think only momentum and lack of vision has prevented FM from eating spreadsheets' lunch.
This is exactly what FileMaker Pro does.
You have the underlying data structure that is independent of calculations and presentation. It is sparse by definition, and can store far more data than any spreadsheet in existence. It can include defined relationships between the different kinds of data.
You have the calculations, that are stored with the data structure, but are functionally independent from it. They can transform, combine, and summarize the data in just about any way you like. They can store their results, increasing speed at the cost of storage, or they can be on demand.
You have the presentation, which depends on the data but is defined separately -- you can have as many different presentation forms as you like, hundreds or even thousands.
And you have actual code that can run on the data and validate it, modify it, organize it etc.
I think only momentum and lack of vision has prevented FM from eating spreadsheets' lunch.
IIRC Improv natively had what later became known as "pivot tables" in Excel. Improv didn't call it anything special, it was just an inherent part of using it.
Long time ago and my memory could be iffy.
Long time ago and my memory could be iffy.
Gil Amelio and Ellen Hancock were I think some of the most underrated management that Apple had, they at least had a better clue about where the company needed to go.
Also, I think Michael Spindler did more damage to Apple than Scully did.
Also, I think Michael Spindler did more damage to Apple than Scully did.
I strongly disagree. Amelio's Macworld 1997 keynote was a legendary failure, just a shocking public show of incompetence. He built zero confidence in anyone joining from NeXT. His book shows a poor understanding of what happened at Apple ("wow, I directed a VP to go write a new modern OS, and they just never did it!?!"). There was no useful depth of vision or insight coming from him or Hancock at the time (my opinion as a lead eng from that time), and it is clear to me that Apple would have continued to spiral into oblivion under their lead (like yahoo).
I'll grant that he did spark the revival by doing the NeXT deal, as Apple did need an acquisition to reboot the software stack.
I'll grant that he did spark the revival by doing the NeXT deal, as Apple did need an acquisition to reboot the software stack.
I dont blame Copland on Amelio, like the product was moribund before he got there, he had the sense to realize it was moribund, hire someone to verify that and then to cancel it and go find something else.
I remember watching that video, the one where he gives Steve the 20th Anniversary Mac! It was shockingly bad, but hilarious in its own way.
Amelio was going to drive Apple straight off a cliff with his vision of opening up MacOS and basically destroying the brand. SGI did that and the company no longer exists now.
Steve Jobs' vision of a walled garden with tight vertical integration was what has kept Apple alive all these years and why things like the iPhone are so successful. I have both an iPhone and an Android, and the integration between iPhone and all its products is beyond comparison to Android.
Steve Jobs' vision of a walled garden with tight vertical integration was what has kept Apple alive all these years and why things like the iPhone are so successful. I have both an iPhone and an Android, and the integration between iPhone and all its products is beyond comparison to Android.
No, Gil and Ellen were incompetent. If they had understood how to separate the wheat from the chaff, a useful version of Copland could have been out in 1997. They were not willing to say no and fire people. The first thing Steve did when he took over? Mass layoff.
It was absolute malpractice to buy NeXT for the OS, which was an obsolete, moribund, and expensive version of Unix.
What they ended up getting was adult management, which was not what they bought the company for, but was what Apple needed.
It was absolute malpractice to buy NeXT for the OS, which was an obsolete, moribund, and expensive version of Unix.
What they ended up getting was adult management, which was not what they bought the company for, but was what Apple needed.
How could Apple could have gotten a real OS more quickly? The Mac OS of the time had no preemptive multitasking or protected memory, so software running on it was doomed to be made unstable by all the other software. NextStep, maybe it was what you say, but they needed to make a change.
The lack of protected memory was pretty insidious—essentially the kernel relied on application memory for its own internals in MacOS, and reentrancy was a problem for, oh, everything. Copland was to fix that first problem though (but only for new apps).
The big advantage of NeXT was the development tooling, it was streets ahead of almost anything else. As a unix it was nothing to write home about, but as a desktop OS it didn't need to be. Just being a Unix at all with decent networking was a huge advantage compared to all the misconceived desktop OS projects at MS, IBM and Apple at the time.
Interesting, ended up watching the entire thing. So much to grok in retrospect but if I was in that crowd a lot of it would sound like hand wavy, bullshit, intangible business speak to me. Really puts into perspective the vision that some people have that many of us can’t grasp. This talk is a great victory for amazing product management.
It's interesting because he clearly has some vision, but he is also a master salesman and manipulator. He pretty adeptly dodges the question about "yea, this is good for Apple but what about developers", because he launches into a sales pitch that ropes you in but leads you to the time that we have today, where Apple uses its walled garden approach to bend and mold developers to their will. It's likely to me that, even at this time, Jobs probably had the whole 30% cream off the top model in his head. It also leads to where macOS and iOS-only developers are worn down by the siphoning and churn and sidelined by the prominence of cross-platform web and Electron apps.
https://youtu.be/qyd0tP0SK6o?t=1260
And god, Jobs just drips with a sort of icky confidence and condescension, and there's certainly a lot of cult of personality present in the audience members.
https://youtu.be/qyd0tP0SK6o?t=1260
And god, Jobs just drips with a sort of icky confidence and condescension, and there's certainly a lot of cult of personality present in the audience members.
I read that one differently. His presentation style was not as well developed as later, but setting that aside I doubt he had a grand plan. What he appeared to have is a point of view that without developers Apple was going to die no matter what else they did, and without more compelling hardware it also wouldn't matter what else they did. He knew that Apple's leverage with the big vendors (Adobe, MS) was limited, so my guess is he was at the point of this talk fishing around trying to figure out how to hustle the company out of that situation. He knew that the current product line was very poor and not making them money. The $150M MS deal was masterful. The product simplification was necessary. But you can see the fishing around, they talked about licensing, supporting Intel, enterprise app dev and server infrastructure, all kinds of random stuff. So I don't attribute any grand plan, just a really specific view on what Apple's problem was and a lot of hustling to try to solve them.
I wasn’t working there but when Jobs came back, Gil Amelio was at the helm, not Sculley. Sculley was long gone by that time. Also worth noting is that Amelio had also cancelled a bunch of projects to cut down costs but Jobs’ was more drastic.
Thanks for clarifying, changed the original post
I have a fairly interesting perspective; I was there when Steve first returned, left after a few months and then returned in less than eighteen months.
I initially joined as a refugee from Be, as it became obvious the PowerPC would no longer be a viable platform for BeOS. I joing the Final Cut Pro team, which has just joined Apple as part of an aquisition of the "Key Grip" video editor from Macromedia.
The FCP team located in IL1 on the third floor I believe. Most of the floor was occupied by the Apple Advance Technology Group. ATG had a really cool space with private offices ringing the outside walls and interior areas with lots of whiteboards and space for doing whatever ATG did. Larry Tesler had a double wide private office and there was a lot of commotion.
The "Blue" team working in MacOs 9 was below us. It was very busy down there as OS 9 was the engine that still powered the company. Those first cool iMacs and MacBooks weren't running OSX! I don't think we even had a "Beaker" build yet.
Steve simply didn't like ATG and over the next few months the spaces rapidly cleared out. We were once stuck in a corner and soon we had a lot of room to set up a couple of large commercial quality edit suite with Avid Media Composers and other high end gear to help make FCP a commercial success.
I wasn't part of any sort of political competition; we just kept making FCP, but watching the exodus of ATG people and seeing how stressed out Steve Glass was running the Blue team was getting me down.
The NeXT people were setting up their world in IL2, with Avie taking an office on the 4th floor and an unofficial sort of NeXT hardware museum springing up outside of the area where the pool table was. It was a cool place to visit; lots of neat NeXT hardware and some SparcStations as well. A Symbolics workstation also showed up in a conference room on the second floor, although it may have been at Apple earlier. If you looked in various hardware labs, there was always intersting hardware to be found; DEC, Infographics, VAX and more.
It wasn't at all obvious to me that Apple was going to figure things out; Steve was being disruptive (in a good way?), but Gil, Ellen, Steve Glass and others were still around and all the NeXT people were doing their thing. I was convinced by some former Be people to go join Andy Herzfeld, Susan Kare, Mike Boich and some other Apple engineering heroes of mine (Darin Adler, John Sullivan) at Eazel.
Eazel folded within eighteen months and I was back at Apple as part of a group hire Andy helped setup with Steve. Anyone who wanted to work at Apple just showed up the next Monday and got to work! Many of those who didn't come to Apple ended up going to Danger Research, Google and other startups. A lot eventually ended up at Apple anyway.
The Apple I came back to was different in that Steve was officialy CEO, but the divisions between groups were still there. It would take several more years before I felt that things felt healthy. As soon as I did think things felt good, Steve become ill, Scott Forstall erected a secure fortress on my floor on IL2 and the political shenanigans began. My initial stock grant priced at $14 a share had grown, gone through a couple of splits and the company was doing billions of dollars a quarter. A far cry from the bleak days of 1997!
I initially joined as a refugee from Be, as it became obvious the PowerPC would no longer be a viable platform for BeOS. I joing the Final Cut Pro team, which has just joined Apple as part of an aquisition of the "Key Grip" video editor from Macromedia.
The FCP team located in IL1 on the third floor I believe. Most of the floor was occupied by the Apple Advance Technology Group. ATG had a really cool space with private offices ringing the outside walls and interior areas with lots of whiteboards and space for doing whatever ATG did. Larry Tesler had a double wide private office and there was a lot of commotion.
The "Blue" team working in MacOs 9 was below us. It was very busy down there as OS 9 was the engine that still powered the company. Those first cool iMacs and MacBooks weren't running OSX! I don't think we even had a "Beaker" build yet.
Steve simply didn't like ATG and over the next few months the spaces rapidly cleared out. We were once stuck in a corner and soon we had a lot of room to set up a couple of large commercial quality edit suite with Avid Media Composers and other high end gear to help make FCP a commercial success.
I wasn't part of any sort of political competition; we just kept making FCP, but watching the exodus of ATG people and seeing how stressed out Steve Glass was running the Blue team was getting me down.
The NeXT people were setting up their world in IL2, with Avie taking an office on the 4th floor and an unofficial sort of NeXT hardware museum springing up outside of the area where the pool table was. It was a cool place to visit; lots of neat NeXT hardware and some SparcStations as well. A Symbolics workstation also showed up in a conference room on the second floor, although it may have been at Apple earlier. If you looked in various hardware labs, there was always intersting hardware to be found; DEC, Infographics, VAX and more.
It wasn't at all obvious to me that Apple was going to figure things out; Steve was being disruptive (in a good way?), but Gil, Ellen, Steve Glass and others were still around and all the NeXT people were doing their thing. I was convinced by some former Be people to go join Andy Herzfeld, Susan Kare, Mike Boich and some other Apple engineering heroes of mine (Darin Adler, John Sullivan) at Eazel.
Eazel folded within eighteen months and I was back at Apple as part of a group hire Andy helped setup with Steve. Anyone who wanted to work at Apple just showed up the next Monday and got to work! Many of those who didn't come to Apple ended up going to Danger Research, Google and other startups. A lot eventually ended up at Apple anyway.
The Apple I came back to was different in that Steve was officialy CEO, but the divisions between groups were still there. It would take several more years before I felt that things felt healthy. As soon as I did think things felt good, Steve become ill, Scott Forstall erected a secure fortress on my floor on IL2 and the political shenanigans began. My initial stock grant priced at $14 a share had grown, gone through a couple of splits and the company was doing billions of dollars a quarter. A far cry from the bleak days of 1997!
I had a PowerPC Mac in ~1998 and I put BeOS R4.5 on it. What a HUGE change from MacOS ... I couldn't believe a computer could actually act and respond like that! I jumped ship to Intel hardware to stick with BeOS.
I'm very curious what you worked on at Be - the development team wasn't that large, was it?
I'm very curious what you worked on at Be - the development team wasn't that large, was it?
The development team was very small. I worked on audio mixing code, capturing video encoded from Bt848 cards, audio and video codecs, anything related to audio and video timing. Several great programmers were there and continue to do amazing things at other companies big and small. I ended up working with many of them at Apple. At some point, it seems many had to choose between Google or Apple.
Very neat. I bought a cheap Bt848 card in '99. I used my BeOS machine to watch TV in my first college dorm. Thanks for all of the memories!
The first version of the driver was written by Be's VP of Engineering, Steve Sakoman. Steve started the "Big Newton" project at Apple and his experience with the AT&T processor was the reason the first BeBox prototypes used AT&T Hobbit CPUs.
Steve returned to Apple as VP of CoreOS or something like that. I was super happy when he came back. I think he is living in the rain forests of Hawaii now, clad only in palm leaves.
Steve returned to Apple as VP of CoreOS or something like that. I was super happy when he came back. I think he is living in the rain forests of Hawaii now, clad only in palm leaves.
Thank you for your service
ATG sounds like it was an incredibly creative little group, and it's a shame such a thing was more or less disbanded (along with letting HyperCard die, etc). SK8 in particular looks like it was very interesting. Someone needs to write a full retrospective of that group!
I agree. Larry Tesler is no longer around to write such a retrospective. I am not sure who else might be able to do it. One of my favorite ATG project was the Dylan[1] programming language.
Larry was working a lot on what would become Stagecast.[2]
There was so much going on, but the way Steve saw it, nothing was shipping. I think he made the right choice shutting it all down. As I said above, it wasn't at all clear that Apple would end up turing into the Apple we have today.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_(programming_language)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagecast_Creator
Larry was working a lot on what would become Stagecast.[2]
There was so much going on, but the way Steve saw it, nothing was shipping. I think he made the right choice shutting it all down. As I said above, it wasn't at all clear that Apple would end up turing into the Apple we have today.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_(programming_language)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagecast_Creator
> There was so much going on, but the way Steve saw it, nothing was shipping. I think he made the right choice shutting it all down.
I think I disagree, but I am pretty Steve-cynical. It seemed to follow a pattern of Steve shutting down things that he wasn't in charge of, or that smacked of Sculley-era Apple?
IL4 used to have a technical library — and a kind museum of Apple products (including a Lisa) that you could play with. My manager let us know one day we might pop over to the library and "check out a few books" - a little bird had told him that we might not have to return them as the library was going bye bye.
And so it did. Eventually I think I donated my Foley and Van-Dam to a library for their book sale.
I think I disagree, but I am pretty Steve-cynical. It seemed to follow a pattern of Steve shutting down things that he wasn't in charge of, or that smacked of Sculley-era Apple?
IL4 used to have a technical library — and a kind museum of Apple products (including a Lisa) that you could play with. My manager let us know one day we might pop over to the library and "check out a few books" - a little bird had told him that we might not have to return them as the library was going bye bye.
And so it did. Eventually I think I donated my Foley and Van-Dam to a library for their book sale.
The loss of that library was sad, but didn't all the books go to the Stanford Apple archive? I also grabbed a book on parsers.
I know some people from ATG found places to stay if they really, really wanted to, but unless you could directly related your work to something on Steve's agenda, you were gone. Kim stayed and worked on voice recognition, Larry Yaeger stayed and worked on InkWell, Jerome stayed and worked on latent semantics analysis for email spam detection, etc.
I know some people from ATG found places to stay if they really, really wanted to, but unless you could directly related your work to something on Steve's agenda, you were gone. Kim stayed and worked on voice recognition, Larry Yaeger stayed and worked on InkWell, Jerome stayed and worked on latent semantics analysis for email spam detection, etc.
Relating your work to something on Steve's agenda is kind of what I was describing. As another pointed out, there were some amazing technologies that came out of ATG. It is impossible to know if they would have been interesting to Jobs though at the time.
Right. If I have to be honest, I don't think I have recovered from the PTSD caused by all of those Thursday Steve UX meetings. Oh the stories that could be told...
I do hope you'll tell them one day. Mind sharing one or two that stand out?
I think I need more counseling to share a lot of them. Let me just say that Steve could be quite brutal. His level of brutality seemed to increase with the level of expectation he had of you. I never saw him be mean to any employee he randomaly encountered on campus. In fact, I saw him open doors, let people ahead of him in the salad bar and cashier line at Cafe Macs and be generally pleasant. It was in those closed door meeting or in rehearsals for MacWorld or WWDC events that you would experience the full wilting blast of scorching invective. Not fun!
ATG pushed Apple to the forefront of computer Video. They came out with Road Apple Video codec (Road Pizza) in 1991.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Advanced_Technology_Grou... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Video
Look up S3TC/DXTC texture compression, S3 copied Apple video codec verbatim and patented it for 3D graphics use. Somehow Apple missed that and didnt fight initial patent, result was losing couple iphone court cases 10 years later and purging S3TC from mobile.
Avid Media Composer was born and grew up on Mac hardware. Same goes for Adobe Premiere, all thanks to ATG work.
https://computerhistory.org/blog/quicktime-and-the-rise-of-m...
ATG might of saved Apple from going bankrupt in late nineties - Microsoft fucked up getting caught conspiring with Intel, paying third party contractor to steal QuickTime code https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/29/microsoft_paid_apple_... Thats the origin of the infamous "Microsoft saved Apple in the nineties" myth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5TdqfNE1QU In reality:
>David Boies, attorney for the DoJ, noted that John Warden, for Microsoft, had omitted to quote part of a handwritten note by Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO, in which Anderson wrote that "the [QuickTime] patent dispute was resolved with cross-licence and significant payment to Apple." The payment was $150 million.
Oral History of Larry Tesler part 1 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZUhobpe6XA
Oral History of Larry Tesler Part 2 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OloLXE4I5fw
Oral History of Larry Tesler Part 3 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJKW7A2rC4s
Oral History of Andy Grignon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_VtQBIEb6I Quicktime 1995-1998, iPod, iPhone https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-andy-grignon-apples-ipo... Currently Walmart of all places.
Look up S3TC/DXTC texture compression, S3 copied Apple video codec verbatim and patented it for 3D graphics use. Somehow Apple missed that and didnt fight initial patent, result was losing couple iphone court cases 10 years later and purging S3TC from mobile.
Avid Media Composer was born and grew up on Mac hardware. Same goes for Adobe Premiere, all thanks to ATG work.
https://computerhistory.org/blog/quicktime-and-the-rise-of-m...
ATG might of saved Apple from going bankrupt in late nineties - Microsoft fucked up getting caught conspiring with Intel, paying third party contractor to steal QuickTime code https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/29/microsoft_paid_apple_... Thats the origin of the infamous "Microsoft saved Apple in the nineties" myth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5TdqfNE1QU In reality:
>David Boies, attorney for the DoJ, noted that John Warden, for Microsoft, had omitted to quote part of a handwritten note by Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO, in which Anderson wrote that "the [QuickTime] patent dispute was resolved with cross-licence and significant payment to Apple." The payment was $150 million.
Oral History of Larry Tesler part 1 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZUhobpe6XA
Oral History of Larry Tesler Part 2 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OloLXE4I5fw
Oral History of Larry Tesler Part 3 of 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJKW7A2rC4s
Oral History of Andy Grignon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_VtQBIEb6I Quicktime 1995-1998, iPod, iPhone https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-andy-grignon-apples-ipo... Currently Walmart of all places.
> and the political shenanigans began
And a lot of coat-tail riding. Kind of the beginning of the end of the good times as an engineer (as far as I was concerned).
And a lot of coat-tail riding. Kind of the beginning of the end of the good times as an engineer (as far as I was concerned).
At that time, Apple made bids for two operating systems. One was Next, represented by Steve Jobs and the other was BeOS, represented by Jean Louis Gasee.
I still believe Apple did a bad choice because, in my opinion BeOS was the far superior OS paradigm. Next was a Nix clone with some GUI over it, but BeOS was different, was smarter and the world is poorer after its demise.
I still believe Apple did a bad choice because, in my opinion BeOS was the far superior OS paradigm. Next was a Nix clone with some GUI over it, but BeOS was different, was smarter and the world is poorer after its demise.
One weird story I heard was some people who were there when Steve left and still there when he returned were called into his office to be berated for...lack of loyalty to his vision?
I've only heard it twice, and only once in any detail. It strikes me as both far fetched rationally but also weirdly possible with Jobs.
I've only heard it twice, and only once in any detail. It strikes me as both far fetched rationally but also weirdly possible with Jobs.
I was not there, but two things from that summer have stuck with me.
First, Steve killed Cyberdog. You'd have thought the world was coming to an end. Second, he came in with his Openstep Thinkpad, and that was it for months. I thought they'd turn that OS around, leverage MAE, and have Openstep 5 running by mid-98.
First, Steve killed Cyberdog. You'd have thought the world was coming to an end. Second, he came in with his Openstep Thinkpad, and that was it for months. I thought they'd turn that OS around, leverage MAE, and have Openstep 5 running by mid-98.
I would imagine not everyone on HN knows that Microsoft saved Apple from going bankrupt in 1997 [0].
Jobs made a deal with Gates for a $150MM investment that would effectively save Apple. Of course, both companies got something out of it. Nobody gives you that kind of money for free.
It a great business lesson. Your competitor doesn't have to lose for you to win.
It is also important to remain humble. You never know when you'll need help. I am going through an interesting moment right now while starting a new tech business.
While I have funded 100% of it myself so far, my best customer is someone who was in direct and intense competition with my other business 15 years ago. We are now talking about him coming-in as an investor and taking-over CEO responsibilities so I can focus on technology. Had we been nasty to each other over a decade ago, these conversations would have been impossible today.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-wh...
Jobs made a deal with Gates for a $150MM investment that would effectively save Apple. Of course, both companies got something out of it. Nobody gives you that kind of money for free.
It a great business lesson. Your competitor doesn't have to lose for you to win.
It is also important to remain humble. You never know when you'll need help. I am going through an interesting moment right now while starting a new tech business.
While I have funded 100% of it myself so far, my best customer is someone who was in direct and intense competition with my other business 15 years ago. We are now talking about him coming-in as an investor and taking-over CEO responsibilities so I can focus on technology. Had we been nasty to each other over a decade ago, these conversations would have been impossible today.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-wh...
Looks like not everyone knows his is all a lie, in reality $150m was a settlement in a lawsuit going after Microsoft, Intel and third party contractor. Microsoft got caught conspiring with Intel, paying third party contractor to steal QuickTime code https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/29/microsoft_paid_apple_...
>David Boies, attorney for the DoJ, noted that John Warden, for Microsoft, had omitted to quote part of a handwritten note by Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO, in which Anderson wrote that "the [QuickTime] patent dispute was resolved with cross-licence and significant payment to Apple." The payment was $150 million.
>It a great business lesson.
that stealing is bad?
>David Boies, attorney for the DoJ, noted that John Warden, for Microsoft, had omitted to quote part of a handwritten note by Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO, in which Anderson wrote that "the [QuickTime] patent dispute was resolved with cross-licence and significant payment to Apple." The payment was $150 million.
>It a great business lesson.
that stealing is bad?
Becoming Steve Jobs digs into this pretty well and how Steve had changed over the last ten years so he would succeed when he returned.
Yeah. Lots of people were.
It's hard to overstate how bloated Apple was internally.
Marketing had products for every conceivable niche. Engineering was all posturing: great hand-waving plans papered over nasty middle-management infighting. Hundreds of engineers in new glass-walled offices, producing plans. I wrote test code against a component that had been delivered months earlier only to find that it was just a stub. Even the debugger had bugs. Everyone knew it was a mess, but went along with it, fatalistically thinking that any OS-level project would be that messy.
I went across the street to JavaSoft: small teams cranking out code that would last forever. Swing was built in a year. Signs on the offices not to disturb the programmers. ~1,000 classes in 1.1, ~10K in 1.2 the next year. One main engineering manager hired a bunch of kids out of college. The JDK tech lead, Mark Reinhold, is still at the helm today.
Night and day; it was like going from the Soviet Union to the U.S.
When considering a new job, I almost don't care about technology. Engineering culture makes all the difference.
Marketing had products for every conceivable niche. Engineering was all posturing: great hand-waving plans papered over nasty middle-management infighting. Hundreds of engineers in new glass-walled offices, producing plans. I wrote test code against a component that had been delivered months earlier only to find that it was just a stub. Even the debugger had bugs. Everyone knew it was a mess, but went along with it, fatalistically thinking that any OS-level project would be that messy.
I went across the street to JavaSoft: small teams cranking out code that would last forever. Swing was built in a year. Signs on the offices not to disturb the programmers. ~1,000 classes in 1.1, ~10K in 1.2 the next year. One main engineering manager hired a bunch of kids out of college. The JDK tech lead, Mark Reinhold, is still at the helm today.
Night and day; it was like going from the Soviet Union to the U.S.
When considering a new job, I almost don't care about technology. Engineering culture makes all the difference.
> Marketing had products for every conceivable niche. Engineering was all posturing: great hand-waving plans papered over nasty middle-management infighting. Hundreds of engineers in new glass-walled offices, producing plans. I wrote test code against a component that had been delivered months earlier only to find that it was just a stub. Even the debugger had bugs. Everyone knew it was a mess, but went along with it, fatalistically thinking that any OS-level project would be that messy.
This sounds like the company I work for presently
This sounds like the company I work for presently
What do you look at in engineering culture?
I would assume there is no one thing to put a finger on. But there are some signs one can take a note of. Generally speaking, to name a few:
- The ability and willingness of the management to invest time and resources into development of proper work processes and infrustructure (imagine having to code without version control in a team)
- Understanding that things aren't always done the moment they appear to be done
- Realization that many things are done to lower the cognitive load exclusively (why do we have to spend 20 hours refactoring the thing if it already works?)
- Understanding why it is important to lower the cognitive load
- And dozens more
These are merely signs, though. One can put 'dnd' signs on doors, but what difference does that make if the same people who introduce the signs still disturb the people behind the doors whenever they feel like it. (no pun intended, couldn't word it better)
It comes down to understanding the nuances, and mutual respect, I think?
- The ability and willingness of the management to invest time and resources into development of proper work processes and infrustructure (imagine having to code without version control in a team)
- Understanding that things aren't always done the moment they appear to be done
- Realization that many things are done to lower the cognitive load exclusively (why do we have to spend 20 hours refactoring the thing if it already works?)
- Understanding why it is important to lower the cognitive load
- And dozens more
These are merely signs, though. One can put 'dnd' signs on doors, but what difference does that make if the same people who introduce the signs still disturb the people behind the doors whenever they feel like it. (no pun intended, couldn't word it better)
It comes down to understanding the nuances, and mutual respect, I think?
> It comes down to understanding the nuances, and mutual respect, I think?
I think that's a great summary.
Look out for companies that try to manage what they don't understand. It can lead to the 'car mechanic phenomenon'. I call it that because it's like the feeling some get when they get the bill from the car mechanic. They can't fix it themselves, so how do they know if someone's pulling one over on them?
I think that's a great summary.
Look out for companies that try to manage what they don't understand. It can lead to the 'car mechanic phenomenon'. I call it that because it's like the feeling some get when they get the bill from the car mechanic. They can't fix it themselves, so how do they know if someone's pulling one over on them?
100%. The companies and programs I've been a part of that failed, this is why. I've been meetings and made what to most engineers would be a truism, and been told by leaders that didn't have even a basic understanding of what we were trying to make "you don't know that, that's not true". In similar situations in successful management lead to "ok, I trust you" and then success. If an organization spends too much of its valuable resources on internal mistrust and convincing people who don't know, it's doomed.
If people have to enter time spent into any system then thats an no from me.
Which means I cannot work for consulting companies :-).
I had a friend interview at "Big Nameless Corp" a few years ago. He said when he saw that the engineers interviewing him all had Windows laptops, he knew immediately it wasn't an engineer-friendly culture. I always thought that was funny.
I try to stay pretty open, but I work on an org with a lot of windows developers. It’s kind of interesting how it’s a totally separate world and the windows devs have their own equivalents to dot files and stuff.
The problem is when they insisted that everyone else must use windows and Mac and Linux machines weren’t allowed.
The problem is when they insisted that everyone else must use windows and Mac and Linux machines weren’t allowed.
>"He said when he saw that the engineers interviewing him all had Windows laptops, he knew immediately it wasn't an engineer-friendly culture."
"Friend" should have his head examined. This kind of snobbery attitude does not do any good
"Friend" should have his head examined. This kind of snobbery attitude does not do any good
It is not snobbery and you are taking it the wrong way.
It is more about having plenty of mature developer tools at your finger tips to get the job done with lots of automation. Also having source of everything allows you to check how something is architected and designed and also improves your own code.
It is very painful to work on Windows laptops when you don't have access to proper dev tools which is the case in most of the corporate setups where they want to uniformity of images to make administration easy.
It is more about having plenty of mature developer tools at your finger tips to get the job done with lots of automation. Also having source of everything allows you to check how something is architected and designed and also improves your own code.
It is very painful to work on Windows laptops when you don't have access to proper dev tools which is the case in most of the corporate setups where they want to uniformity of images to make administration easy.
I work at a BigCorp. A sister team develops client software for Windows. Can you guess what kind of laptops the engineers have?
I don’t really see how that’s relevant given that WSL exists.
WSL in Windows 10 is almost useless. Also for embedded and people working on kernels etc it is really painful.
WSL is a business checkmark used to keep engineers quiet. It's not a pleasant surrounding ecosystem and the implementation isn't as high fidelity is the real thing.
Exactly. It is painful in Windows 10. Nothing beats running natively.
[deleted]
And how do you even "look" at it from the outside? Ask interviewers and they will always tell you that they have great culture, teamwork, etc
Easy,
Ask where the documentation is.
Ask how much input engineers have on what they are working on.
Ask how many meetings hours they average per day.
Ask where the documentation is.
Ask how much input engineers have on what they are working on.
Ask how many meetings hours they average per day.
>Ask how much input engineers have on what they are working on.
This is the way. Ask this question of people working at a legacy company and they won't be able to meet your eyes.
This is the way. Ask this question of people working at a legacy company and they won't be able to meet your eyes.
> Ask where the documentation is.
I've had a reasonably long career and worked at a number of companies at this point, and I've never seen this 'documentation' that engineers are supposedly producing.
I've had a reasonably long career and worked at a number of companies at this point, and I've never seen this 'documentation' that engineers are supposedly producing.
I think existence of documentation is a poor metric, personally.
I think a better metric is to ask why the documentation isn't better. Nobody is ever happy with their documentation, whether they have too little or too much. But if the engineers think it's because they're being pushed too hard and there's no slack time available to write docs? Red flag. They have explicitly considered the question and realized that the effort to write the docs, compounded by the need to keep them up to date and/or the cost of allowing them to be out of date, is not worth it in their particular situation? Good sign. They feel kind of bad and guilty about the state of the docs? Too normal to be much of a sign, but still positive.
These questions are ultimately just asking what the work culture is like, they don't really have anything to do with documentation. And in that sense they're good questions to ask during an interview. As you allude to though, I don't think you're going to get good information if you just ask surface level questions about docs.
The meat of the question is, "where do you go when don't know how to do a thing?".
The answer could potentially be "the docs", but that's not necessarily sufficient like you point out. However, you could ask follow-ups, e.g., whether the docs have multiple facets like user guides in addition to low-level API guides.
OTOH, where you go when don't know how to do something doesn't necessarily have to be the docs, and info here can still be valuable to understand. E.g., are questions typically discussed in public forums or is it discussed in private DMs? The former is typically a better signal in my experience.
The answer could potentially be "the docs", but that's not necessarily sufficient like you point out. However, you could ask follow-ups, e.g., whether the docs have multiple facets like user guides in addition to low-level API guides.
OTOH, where you go when don't know how to do something doesn't necessarily have to be the docs, and info here can still be valuable to understand. E.g., are questions typically discussed in public forums or is it discussed in private DMs? The former is typically a better signal in my experience.
Compare the quality in the documenation from lawyers and engineers in the company. True experts tend to be excellent communicators. SJ adequately described the short comings of Flash the phoneys pushed back against without merit.
We really have the opposite problem, there are lots of documentations but they are not exactly organized or all up to date. Much easier to fix than not having any of them I would guess.
Welcome to health care. We produce a ton of documents that then disappear into a terrible document management system to never be found again.
I feel like having too much doc is not really a problem :)
Ask if I find a bug in the code, what's the process to getting it fixed? And about how long is that?
Thank you. These are valuable pointers.
Respect for the craft and those that practice it.
> When considering a new job, I almost don't care about technology. Engineering culture makes all the difference.
This resonated with me. Whether you are recruiting or looking culture is incredibly powerful.
This resonated with me. Whether you are recruiting or looking culture is incredibly powerful.
This is hard though because culture often isn't very legible.
I'd easily trade pay (within reason) and any tech stack for a truly great culture where I felt driven and engaged and was doing meaningful work, but the latter is really hard to understand ahead of time.
I'd easily trade pay (within reason) and any tech stack for a truly great culture where I felt driven and engaged and was doing meaningful work, but the latter is really hard to understand ahead of time.
It is. However, in earlier phases people can recruit from their networks.
They will only be able to sell their best contacts with trusted tales of good things.
They will only be able to sell their best contacts with trusted tales of good things.
Right before that era I worked on Mosaic for Windows, and the Mac developers sat across the stairwell from us. The Mac guys had a very love hate relationship with Macs.
On the one hand the lead was infinitely proud of being able to have 2 (or was it three?) monitors on his desk, big CRTs on a desk designed during the Cold War, by a designer who had nightmares about nuclear blasts and wanted someplace safe to duck and cover. You could do that with Macs but not quite yet with Windows. If memory serves, Linux got that ability before Windows did but don't quote me on that.
On the other hand they were writing what is ostensibly a concurrent application on an operating system with no protected memory and no pre-emptive multitasking, so the whole thing was using hand-rolled cooperative multitasking via C longjumps. It's no wonder the Windows team had an easier time keeping up with Netscape for that golden year. They were from what I understand cross compiling, and the Windows team could just do Windowsy things with a fifth of the staff.
So my experience of this era, through that lens, through learning to hate Macs at the hands of Mathematica, and also through rumor mills, was that a lot of Apple's OS people ended up going to Palm, where they made pretty much the same set of tradeoffs. It was very weird watching subsequent Palm models start to bump up against the same ceiling that NextStep was helping Apple route around.
I told my Mac loving friends to talk to me when Apple had a modern OS. So when NextStep merged my ears pricked up. My first Mac ended up being an anomaly. Apple briefly produced a 13" Mac with a discrete video card, which they haven't since. I had been struggling to get Linux drivers for a Fujitsu LightBook, which was ridiculously small, but was practically obsolete by the time I got everything working. That device is the sole time I've contributed to Linux, which was cool but exhausting. So I ran to a pretty UI, works out of the box, but ships with /bin/bash with open arms and never looked back.
You could still see the bones of NextStep in OS X for some time.
The university ended up with upward of 60 NeXT machines (which I later learned is a lot for one college), in 2 labs when I started, eventually in 3 that I knew of, one of which I ended up with after hours access to. On many occasions they were the only open machines. I had helped too many people who lost their papers to faulty disk drives and learned that the best way to write a paper was to keep my Unix account empty and mail myself copies, so it hardly mattered that I didn't have a floppy for the NeXTs. It didn't hurt that they never figured out how to meter the NeXT laser printer, so while it wasn't the best or fastest printer on campus, it was the only free one. "Your printah is out of paypah."
On the one hand the lead was infinitely proud of being able to have 2 (or was it three?) monitors on his desk, big CRTs on a desk designed during the Cold War, by a designer who had nightmares about nuclear blasts and wanted someplace safe to duck and cover. You could do that with Macs but not quite yet with Windows. If memory serves, Linux got that ability before Windows did but don't quote me on that.
On the other hand they were writing what is ostensibly a concurrent application on an operating system with no protected memory and no pre-emptive multitasking, so the whole thing was using hand-rolled cooperative multitasking via C longjumps. It's no wonder the Windows team had an easier time keeping up with Netscape for that golden year. They were from what I understand cross compiling, and the Windows team could just do Windowsy things with a fifth of the staff.
So my experience of this era, through that lens, through learning to hate Macs at the hands of Mathematica, and also through rumor mills, was that a lot of Apple's OS people ended up going to Palm, where they made pretty much the same set of tradeoffs. It was very weird watching subsequent Palm models start to bump up against the same ceiling that NextStep was helping Apple route around.
I told my Mac loving friends to talk to me when Apple had a modern OS. So when NextStep merged my ears pricked up. My first Mac ended up being an anomaly. Apple briefly produced a 13" Mac with a discrete video card, which they haven't since. I had been struggling to get Linux drivers for a Fujitsu LightBook, which was ridiculously small, but was practically obsolete by the time I got everything working. That device is the sole time I've contributed to Linux, which was cool but exhausting. So I ran to a pretty UI, works out of the box, but ships with /bin/bash with open arms and never looked back.
You could still see the bones of NextStep in OS X for some time.
The university ended up with upward of 60 NeXT machines (which I later learned is a lot for one college), in 2 labs when I started, eventually in 3 that I knew of, one of which I ended up with after hours access to. On many occasions they were the only open machines. I had helped too many people who lost their papers to faulty disk drives and learned that the best way to write a paper was to keep my Unix account empty and mail myself copies, so it hardly mattered that I didn't have a floppy for the NeXTs. It didn't hurt that they never figured out how to meter the NeXT laser printer, so while it wasn't the best or fastest printer on campus, it was the only free one. "Your printah is out of paypah."
> So my experience of this era, through that lens, through learning to hate Macs at the hands of Mathematica, and also through rumor mills, was that a lot of Apple's OS people ended up going to Palm, where they made pretty much the same set of tradeoffs.
Not just making the same tradeoffs, but making a lot of the same software -- early PalmOS was effectively a handheld remake of Mac OS. Same CPU architecture, very similar OS design. Some of the A-traps even had similar or identical names.
Not just making the same tradeoffs, but making a lot of the same software -- early PalmOS was effectively a handheld remake of Mac OS. Same CPU architecture, very similar OS design. Some of the A-traps even had similar or identical names.
>On the other hand they were writing what is ostensibly a concurrent application on an operating system with no protected memory and no pre-emptive multitasking, so the whole thing was using hand-rolled cooperative multitasking via C longjumps. It's no wonder the Windows team had an easier time keeping up with Netscape for that golden year.
As one among your customer base for both versions, indeed. People who never used pre-Unix MacOS have no idea how unreliable it was. Windows 95 and 98 weren't great, but there was at least some hope of killing an errant application and continuing on. System 7? No hope whatsoever. It didn't help that Mosaic (and Netscape) wasn't very reliable regardless of platform, but the OS's own failings made things that much worse.
>a lot of Apple's OS people ended up going to Palm, where they made pretty much the same set of tradeoffs.
That makes sense, both from an attractive-new-startup view (I'm sure many within Apple c. 1997 was pushing for a small, inexpensive Apple PDA to respond to Palm), and from a familiar-feeling-OS view.
>So I ran to a pretty UI, works out of the box, but ships with /bin/bash with open arms and never looked back.
I figured this out on the day in 2003 when I first tried out OS X. I've been using Linux since 1995 and had tried every available desktop: CDE, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment (The horror .. the horror ...), Window Maker/AfterStep, fvwm, and even older ones like Motif and twm. I'd used Mac OS 7 and 8 in college and hated it (as mentioned above), but OS X was a revelation.
I still use Linux as a server, but for a Unixlike desktop that actually works and runs a lot of applications, OS X is it. Period.
(I wrote the above on Slashdot ten years ago <https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2940345&cid=40457103>. I see no need for changes.)
>The university ended up with upward of 60 NeXT machines (which I later learned is a lot for one college)
I don't think my college ever deployed NeXTs in public student labs the way it did deploy HP workstations <https://np.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comments/ludshu/macinto...>, but I did use them in college as well. I still think NeXTStep did UI better than MacOS pre- or post-Unix.
As one among your customer base for both versions, indeed. People who never used pre-Unix MacOS have no idea how unreliable it was. Windows 95 and 98 weren't great, but there was at least some hope of killing an errant application and continuing on. System 7? No hope whatsoever. It didn't help that Mosaic (and Netscape) wasn't very reliable regardless of platform, but the OS's own failings made things that much worse.
>a lot of Apple's OS people ended up going to Palm, where they made pretty much the same set of tradeoffs.
That makes sense, both from an attractive-new-startup view (I'm sure many within Apple c. 1997 was pushing for a small, inexpensive Apple PDA to respond to Palm), and from a familiar-feeling-OS view.
>So I ran to a pretty UI, works out of the box, but ships with /bin/bash with open arms and never looked back.
I figured this out on the day in 2003 when I first tried out OS X. I've been using Linux since 1995 and had tried every available desktop: CDE, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment (The horror .. the horror ...), Window Maker/AfterStep, fvwm, and even older ones like Motif and twm. I'd used Mac OS 7 and 8 in college and hated it (as mentioned above), but OS X was a revelation.
I still use Linux as a server, but for a Unixlike desktop that actually works and runs a lot of applications, OS X is it. Period.
(I wrote the above on Slashdot ten years ago <https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2940345&cid=40457103>. I see no need for changes.)
>The university ended up with upward of 60 NeXT machines (which I later learned is a lot for one college)
I don't think my college ever deployed NeXTs in public student labs the way it did deploy HP workstations <https://np.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comments/ludshu/macinto...>, but I did use them in college as well. I still think NeXTStep did UI better than MacOS pre- or post-Unix.
System 7 came out in 1991 while Windows 3.1 wasn't even released until 1992. Apple had a huge lead but they squandered it on failed rewrites.
> A lot of Apple's OS people ended up going to Palm, where they made pretty much the same set of tradeoffs. It was very weird watching subsequent Palm models start to bump up against the same ceiling.
Didn't know about this. This is before ‘webOS’, right? What kind of OS problems are we talking here?
Didn't know about this. This is before ‘webOS’, right? What kind of OS problems are we talking here?
A long time ago now, but I vaguely recall that the original PalmPilot OS chose to replicate the mistakes of the original Mac. Data structures exposed all over the place, apps had to implement the basics of event handling rather than have most of it handled for them.
I'm not sure what services PalmOS provided to the apps, but to my limited knowledge the apps themselves were non-multitasking, and had a standardized database per each app instead of the filesystem (i.e. something like proto-IndexedDB, but more oriented to documents or blobs). So it's kinda difficult to imagine them having the problems of quasi-multitasking and more complex MacOS. But perhaps things became involved by PalmOS 5.
Though the event handling part sounds like DOS' raw approach, versus Win95's abstraction—and I guess could plague any kind of a system.
Though the event handling part sounds like DOS' raw approach, versus Win95's abstraction—and I guess could plague any kind of a system.
Palm OS was designed for the hardware of the time. It was very simple but ran well. Compared to Microsoft's approach of building a stripped down clone of Windows NT that barely ran on the hardware of the era. But in the long term Microsoft's approach was more successful because as hardware improved they had an OS ready to take advantage of it.
Of course, what Microsoft wasn't ready for was the hardware getting so good that Apple could just port their existing desktop OS and software over.
Of course, what Microsoft wasn't ready for was the hardware getting so good that Apple could just port their existing desktop OS and software over.
> What Microsoft wasn't ready for was the hardware getting so good that Apple could just port their existing desktop OS and software over.
Eh, I mean, MS attempted that more that once themselves: though WinCE wasn't Win9x inside, it sure looked like one, and purportedly even had swap.
Eh, I mean, MS attempted that more that once themselves: though WinCE wasn't Win9x inside, it sure looked like one, and purportedly even had swap.
For example, the original 1984 Mac hardcoded the screen resolution to 512x384 black & white so they had to rewrite QuickDraw just three years later to add color, different resolutions, and multiple monitors. Classic Mac OS was easy to crash because it had no memory protection.
In 1996 Palm OS had hardcoded screen resolution with no color support. They had no memory protection. Palm also used already-obsolete DragonBall/68K processors when faster ARMs were already available.
In 1996 Palm OS had hardcoded screen resolution with no color support. They had no memory protection. Palm also used already-obsolete DragonBall/68K processors when faster ARMs were already available.
I think he talks about a very different era
> "Your printah is out of paypah."
Oh man that brings back memories!
Oh man that brings back memories!
Part of that may also have been the greenfield development nature of JavaSoft; it's often easier to make rapid progress if you don't have to be backward compatible with preexisting APIs etc.
And from what I heard, Sun as a whole was a highly dysfunctional company as well, even during the time in question. The dot com boom just papered over a lot of the dysfunction for a few years.
And from what I heard, Sun as a whole was a highly dysfunctional company as well, even during the time in question. The dot com boom just papered over a lot of the dysfunction for a few years.
Marketing had products for every conceivable niche.
Ah, the Performa era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Performa
Mind you, my first Mac was a Performa, as we sure didn’t know better.
Ah, the Performa era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Performa
Mind you, my first Mac was a Performa, as we sure didn’t know better.
Obligatory story how someone tailgated to apple’s office long after being fired to finish his project around ‘94 I think: https://youtu.be/Dl643JFJWig
I wrote a 1.2 Swing desktop app with a JNI DLL to call Win32 to create a desktop shortcut. The hilarious part is it violated the EULA because a JRE was shipped and ran from a CD. It took about 30 seconds to load, so it seemed very important. :) It was themed with a JPG in the background to paint the window object's canvas.
I agree, not almost, 100% care about engineering culture only when considering a new job. Poor tech design cam be fixed by a healthy engineering culture, an unhealthy engineering culture can't really be "fixed" (only eliminated and re built well).
Well, it's much easier to write a brand new language and class libraries. Everything is self contained, there are no dumb users involved, no undocumented external functions, most of the library functions can be ported from existing languages etc.
[deleted]
> Swing was built in a year
Checks out. I'm still bitter towards Swing though. But impressive what they could put out in a year.
That said, I'm absolutely NOT a fan of the JWZ sleeping bag under your desk/get it done whatever the cost mindset that was everywhere in the 90's.
Checks out. I'm still bitter towards Swing though. But impressive what they could put out in a year.
That said, I'm absolutely NOT a fan of the JWZ sleeping bag under your desk/get it done whatever the cost mindset that was everywhere in the 90's.
FYI: JWZ has long-since disavowed this attitude, and much else.
Bitter towards Swing?
Yes. Swing was not good, we had better idioms before and after.
Any stories you'd be willing to share from your time at JavaSoft?
I wish companies would be run in a way that removes insane leveling completely.
In my current company there are 7 or 8 levels (depending how you look at it) for ICs. Why?
IME it has led to so much “talk” and bloat, and useless meetings led by people trying to prove something who go on and on about things that make no sense. No execution, only flattery and BS.
IMO, the only levels you need should be Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, and Software Architect. The architects should be rare, and there should be a healthy mix of seniors and juniors focused on building and supporting products internal and customer facing.
Why do we have several layers of managers? Out of a dozen managers only two have been good. They’re also the first ones fired. It just seems stupid, even if it’s purposefully done that way (that’s even dumber to consider). Have lean teams with a lead, and a manager who manages several teams, and a director for each product offering who reports to a CTO or something. VP, SVP, EVP. Why?
I’m on a team where people waste so much time and yet I see those same people get promoted, while I’m told I’m disengaged because I don’t turn on my camera in bullshit meetings (to plan future meetings or ramble). On the other hand, my team consistently delivers on time or sooner, while those teams take forever.
It’s sad, really.
In my current company there are 7 or 8 levels (depending how you look at it) for ICs. Why?
IME it has led to so much “talk” and bloat, and useless meetings led by people trying to prove something who go on and on about things that make no sense. No execution, only flattery and BS.
IMO, the only levels you need should be Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, and Software Architect. The architects should be rare, and there should be a healthy mix of seniors and juniors focused on building and supporting products internal and customer facing.
Why do we have several layers of managers? Out of a dozen managers only two have been good. They’re also the first ones fired. It just seems stupid, even if it’s purposefully done that way (that’s even dumber to consider). Have lean teams with a lead, and a manager who manages several teams, and a director for each product offering who reports to a CTO or something. VP, SVP, EVP. Why?
I’m on a team where people waste so much time and yet I see those same people get promoted, while I’m told I’m disengaged because I don’t turn on my camera in bullshit meetings (to plan future meetings or ramble). On the other hand, my team consistently delivers on time or sooner, while those teams take forever.
It’s sad, really.
> In my current company there are 7 or 8 levels (depending how you look at it) for ICs. Why?
Promotions tend to represent some combination of four things to most companies:
• more expected impact and workload,
• more status,
• more money, and
• more expected industry experience and seniority
The three level system you propose might work if the company using it is in fact actually flatter in its internal hierarchy on those traits - but if it’s not, from the perspectives of the workers, all you’ve done is intentionally obscured the mechanics of the actual hierarchy you’re using in a way that even further obscures pay disparities, denies workers who are motivated by externally visible status a route to progression, equates high performing “just below architect” and “barely above software engineer” workloads in a way likely to incentivize many seniors to coast, and surrenders an easy tool for gauging performance by measuring how successfully someone is progressing at the company and in the field based on their level vs. years of experience.
Promotions tend to represent some combination of four things to most companies:
• more expected impact and workload,
• more status,
• more money, and
• more expected industry experience and seniority
The three level system you propose might work if the company using it is in fact actually flatter in its internal hierarchy on those traits - but if it’s not, from the perspectives of the workers, all you’ve done is intentionally obscured the mechanics of the actual hierarchy you’re using in a way that even further obscures pay disparities, denies workers who are motivated by externally visible status a route to progression, equates high performing “just below architect” and “barely above software engineer” workloads in a way likely to incentivize many seniors to coast, and surrenders an easy tool for gauging performance by measuring how successfully someone is progressing at the company and in the field based on their level vs. years of experience.
> The architects should be rare
This reminded me of my time at iHeartMedia. The company had an entire department of non-coding architects. They produced so many Visio diagrams that the company had to purchase a product that indexed these documents so that they could be searched.
The amount of busywork that was produced still takes my breath away.
This reminded me of my time at iHeartMedia. The company had an entire department of non-coding architects. They produced so many Visio diagrams that the company had to purchase a product that indexed these documents so that they could be searched.
The amount of busywork that was produced still takes my breath away.
The IC leveling at Apple is similar to what you have described. ICT 3/4/5 roughly maps to what you have. The problem with this is that while it's relatively easy to go from a 3 to a 4 after a few years, it's a huge jump from 4 to 5, and then after that you've basically peaked for life. If you just care about building great things, it can work, but for many people, feeling like there's growth and not stagnation is a problem. It also creates a problem for managers having to temper those expectations.
Limiting IC layers doesn't remove all the other politics.
Limiting IC layers doesn't remove all the other politics.
Not really true anymore unfortunately, and the system is converging with other large organizations.
For example, to keep compensation in line with market and reduce attrition, there were definitely more people who got promoted to ICT5 last year and the designation has thus been diluted.
Furthermore, candidates coming in from other large companies expect the title/leveling prestige in many cases, and ICT5 is a tough sell while trying to hire a Google L7/8. So Apple does have a fair number of ICT6 from that.
I also think limiting IC layers and keeping the above politics minimal can work - Netflix did that for a long time and was very successful as a company with their approach. Most IC at Netflix were simply titled "senior software engineer", with pay being a wide band dependent on market value. They no longer do that for some reasons, and have adopted the standard large level hierarchy.
For example, to keep compensation in line with market and reduce attrition, there were definitely more people who got promoted to ICT5 last year and the designation has thus been diluted.
Furthermore, candidates coming in from other large companies expect the title/leveling prestige in many cases, and ICT5 is a tough sell while trying to hire a Google L7/8. So Apple does have a fair number of ICT6 from that.
I also think limiting IC layers and keeping the above politics minimal can work - Netflix did that for a long time and was very successful as a company with their approach. Most IC at Netflix were simply titled "senior software engineer", with pay being a wide band dependent on market value. They no longer do that for some reasons, and have adopted the standard large level hierarchy.
Fair number of ICT6… would you say more than 250 out of what, 25K engineers?
At Palantir, there are no levels at all, everyone is just a simple software engineer. It's their relevant experience that gives an engineer leverage on a project.
I worked at a place like that before. A lot of people were grumpy that they were not progressing. Some of them were probably right; some were probably wrong. But it was clear to me that having a concrete thing to aim for (a new title) mattered. A lot.
I take it that wasn't the case at Palantir. Since I'm convinced that all humans are status-seeking, I'm curious how Palantir satisfied that urge, if not w/ title differentiation.
I take it that wasn't the case at Palantir. Since I'm convinced that all humans are status-seeking, I'm curious how Palantir satisfied that urge, if not w/ title differentiation.
Is it bad to discourage status-seeking behavior, such that the people are just that way... look elsewhere?
I don't believe in good or bad wrt stuff like this. You're welcome to try to discourage it, but success would depend crucially on how many people really are not "that way." I don't think I'd take that bet, personally, but it's possible I've lived in a strange sub-world and have met unusual people.
> In my current company there are 7 or 8 levels (depending how you look at it) for ICs. Why?
Probably same reason hn has points count beyond 500
Probably same reason hn has points count beyond 500
I agree with you that promo culture is pretty much the root of modern big company rot, but under your system, how do you propose an industrious, ambitious IC move up, whatever that means? Even if you think the status is fake and dumb (and I would agree), how do you make more money as an IC?
Exactly - what does it mean?
You work on stimulating things and get paid what you accept.
You’ll have a yearly review where you have your say, and pay can be increased if employer think it’s worth it.
Titles are problematic in teams working to produce good stuff!
We should compare ourselves to athletes more than the MBA powerpoint version of a company.
I hear Tom Brady is a legend - is he an S10 quarterback? Senior quarterback? Or just a quarterback with high a salary based on performance?
I believe levels are instruments for managers not employees.
You work on stimulating things and get paid what you accept.
You’ll have a yearly review where you have your say, and pay can be increased if employer think it’s worth it.
Titles are problematic in teams working to produce good stuff!
We should compare ourselves to athletes more than the MBA powerpoint version of a company.
I hear Tom Brady is a legend - is he an S10 quarterback? Senior quarterback? Or just a quarterback with high a salary based on performance?
I believe levels are instruments for managers not employees.
I agree with you that a level system creates bad incentives for everyone. But what they do provide is a rubric for the ambitious 23 year old who wants to climb to the top of whatever group he’s in. If you get rid of levels, what’s the new hierarchy for him to climb? If you don’t specify a hierarchy, one is going to form anyway, and then it’s even more out of your control.
If you’re going to say the hierarchy should be based on people doing real work, well I agree, but that is pretty much impossible to measure in groups beyond a certain size.
This groups beyond a certain size problem is the root of the problem, not levels, which are just a stopgap measure to slow the brakes on the deterioration and degeneracy that you find in any gigantic group of people.
If you’re going to say the hierarchy should be based on people doing real work, well I agree, but that is pretty much impossible to measure in groups beyond a certain size.
This groups beyond a certain size problem is the root of the problem, not levels, which are just a stopgap measure to slow the brakes on the deterioration and degeneracy that you find in any gigantic group of people.
Everyone who cares about Brady is watching him and knows how he is performing. This is not true of engineers.
This is why I’m stating it’s a management tool.
Poor management requires boxes.
Better management actually care and help employees perform and improve.
In the end it’s about culture.
Poor management requires boxes.
Better management actually care and help employees perform and improve.
In the end it’s about culture.
Impact? Someone could be an amazing mentor and mediocre at actual output, but their impact could lead to a bunch of people being able to stay leveled up and think more efficiently that lets the team ship more with less bugs. Maybe there’s a senior engineer who can consistently crank out high quality code and identify optimizations that save money.
Some sort of holistic 360 reviews by peers where others can vouch for you could work. What’s the big deal with having one senior paid 180k and another 350k if their impacts are considerably different? I have personally dealt with BS like “we can’t promote you rn but also can’t give you a raise because you’re at the upper limit of your salary band”. That’s not fair, imo.
Some sort of holistic 360 reviews by peers where others can vouch for you could work. What’s the big deal with having one senior paid 180k and another 350k if their impacts are considerably different? I have personally dealt with BS like “we can’t promote you rn but also can’t give you a raise because you’re at the upper limit of your salary band”. That’s not fair, imo.
How do you stop the measurement of impact from degenerating into exactly the same situation we have now? In fact, I’m pretty sure at many bigcos “impact” is already the official metric for promo.
The real thing you’re getting at is that people should only be paid and promoted for real work, and not for bullshit work, but that’s basically impossible to measure once organizations grow beyond a certain size.
Also, in orgs beyond a certain size, “holistic” peer review based evals make bullshit promo culture worse, not better. It basically ends up meaning how much people like you, and accelerates the shift toward a culture where people optimize for that instead of doing real work. And then you’re back at square one.
The real thing you’re getting at is that people should only be paid and promoted for real work, and not for bullshit work, but that’s basically impossible to measure once organizations grow beyond a certain size.
Also, in orgs beyond a certain size, “holistic” peer review based evals make bullshit promo culture worse, not better. It basically ends up meaning how much people like you, and accelerates the shift toward a culture where people optimize for that instead of doing real work. And then you’re back at square one.
I remember finding out some companies had SO many VPs. how can you have that many VPs? isn't it like making everyone a senior engineer?
In investment banking, that's just a mid-level title. The usual progression is Analyst, Associate, VP, Director, Managing Director.
Not everyone becomes MD, but you definitely become VP by sticking around for a few years.
Not everyone becomes MD, but you definitely become VP by sticking around for a few years.
At my current job between the CEO and me the reporting chain had one SVP and three VPs.
Vice President right? Weird naming considering it makes it sound like there should be 1 and they are in position #2 of all people.
Your description of 1997 Apple sounds uncomfortably close to modern Google. I miss working for startups.
That was also echoing through my brain while reading through the comment (worked there awhile ago)
It would be crazy if someone just shook up the whole company top to bottom, but google is still making money and apple wasn’t
So I think it will never happen
It would be crazy if someone just shook up the whole company top to bottom, but google is still making money and apple wasn’t
So I think it will never happen
Good point, it's not a good comparison.
> it will never happen
I can see it happening. They have just one cash cow in advertising, and it's not terribly secure. TikTok is already a serious threat to YouTube. If this became a crisis, it wouldn't sink the company, but it'd certainly shake it up.
> it will never happen
I can see it happening. They have just one cash cow in advertising, and it's not terribly secure. TikTok is already a serious threat to YouTube. If this became a crisis, it wouldn't sink the company, but it'd certainly shake it up.
The "TikTok threat" is so overblown. It's not activity competing with any existing social or video platform. It's competing for time, but that's about it. No one is using TikTok to stay in touch with their Grandmother or watching 2 hour Podcasts on it. They invented a new type of video entertainment which has a social element, that's it - it's neither a YouTube or a social network competitor.
I'd argue Snapchat is probably their most direct competitor, but Snapchat's DAU is still growing fine, because even in Snapchat's case I think you can argue they're used differently. Snapchat seems to be used primarily to stay in touch with friends where as TikTok seems to be used to find/share short-form video content with strangers.
I'd argue Snapchat is probably their most direct competitor, but Snapchat's DAU is still growing fine, because even in Snapchat's case I think you can argue they're used differently. Snapchat seems to be used primarily to stay in touch with friends where as TikTok seems to be used to find/share short-form video content with strangers.
It directly competes for some use cases, for time, and for ads. One person's total time spent watching videos doesn't grow just because there's a new platform on the block. Kids even use TikTok as an alternative to Google searches for knowledge. I'm not saying TikTok alone can wreck Google, but YouTube at least felt threatened enough to make something similar called Shorts.
IDK about the social network side. Google doesn't really have one, so it's whatever.
IDK about the social network side. Google doesn't really have one, so it's whatever.
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> Kids even use TikTok as an alternative to Google searches for knowledge
Is that why Google search heavily forces tons of Youtube results to the top now even when it is barely relevant?
Is that why Google search heavily forces tons of Youtube results to the top now even when it is barely relevant?
Maybe not cause of TikTok directly but because subtitled videos in general are an easier format on a phone compared to scrolling around search results and dealing with 2-5 popups (including the cookies agreement) on every site. Web browsing is much easier on a PC, but that's the minority use case.
> compared to scrolling around search results and dealing with 2-5 popups
Queue the four minute youtube ad.
Queue the four minute youtube ad.
Yeah there's that too. I think TikTok simply has fewer ads.
One of my friends described tech platforms as following a cycle where they're popular while they're loss-leading, but eventually they try to reel in profits that are actually proportional to their valuation, and everyone switches to the next thing. This implies that later investors are duped into holding the bag for something that's not worth the investment. Idk if he's right, but given the tendency for tech to ride bubbles, he could be.
One of my friends described tech platforms as following a cycle where they're popular while they're loss-leading, but eventually they try to reel in profits that are actually proportional to their valuation, and everyone switches to the next thing. This implies that later investors are duped into holding the bag for something that's not worth the investment. Idk if he's right, but given the tendency for tech to ride bubbles, he could be.
Nothing is forever.
It's very much apples to goggles - google is gigantic, mature company with some problems and one that makes occasional missteps. It still makes many things people like, including truckfuls of money. 1997 Apple had a very enthusiastic userbase, small and dwindling market share, mostly terrible products and was teetering on the edge of extinction.
It's more how I feel about the SWE culture, not the company's fate. You're right that they're very different scenarios, including the fact that it's not 1997 anymore.
It's just a fundamentally different thing to be working for a company that is not a burning shipwreck. It influences culture and everything else much more strongly than some of the organizational parallels (although I think these are pretty weak as well). Imagine what working at Google would be like if Google was a losing search engine company.
Depends how it's losing. Could be like Yahoo! who just accepted its fate and sank as gracefully as possible, or could be like Apple who fought back.
Maybe even modern Apple, as if Apple just sort of reverted after Steve Jobs passed away.
Hmm, doesn't feel good having such a negative comment rise up this much.
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> Engineering was all posturing: great hand-waving plans papered over nasty middle-management infighting. Hundreds of engineers in new glass-walled offices, producing plans.
Sounds a lot like a lot of FAANG companies today.
Sounds a lot like a lot of FAANG companies today.
Sadly just sounds like ... human organizations often get.
The iron law of bureaucracy:
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
I've always wondered what the Iron Solution to Bureaucracy looks like.
Usually it's smaller companies eating the big companies lunch via competition. But that usually takes a very long time (or competition is crushed by 'good intentions' aka gov policy). I know 'intrapenuership' and spawning isolated startups internally, where teams that are walled off from the middle managers of the larger company, was pushed by Clayton M. Christensen.
But the two areas that seem to be in a death grip with this problem are: modern western governments and monopolies (usually with market position enforced by said governments).
Whenever people push for reducing bureaucracy in gov they get accused of only wanting to help the rich or get crushed by the benefactors (lobbyists/NIMBYs/'local jobs' protection rackets/etc). And monopolies survive even when they are an organizational disaster internally, because where else can customers go?
Usually it's smaller companies eating the big companies lunch via competition. But that usually takes a very long time (or competition is crushed by 'good intentions' aka gov policy). I know 'intrapenuership' and spawning isolated startups internally, where teams that are walled off from the middle managers of the larger company, was pushed by Clayton M. Christensen.
But the two areas that seem to be in a death grip with this problem are: modern western governments and monopolies (usually with market position enforced by said governments).
Whenever people push for reducing bureaucracy in gov they get accused of only wanting to help the rich or get crushed by the benefactors (lobbyists/NIMBYs/'local jobs' protection rackets/etc). And monopolies survive even when they are an organizational disaster internally, because where else can customers go?
Some degree of bureaucracy is necessary and inevitable in any organization, as it's basically the glue that makes a group of people an organization. Imagine how difficult it'd be to collaborate on a project with even just one other person, if you didn't meet / pass notes / info on what each you were doing on the project, at least once. That process of passing info, is what constitutes bureaucracy, and bureaucrats act as the gatekeepers of such processes.
So unfortunately, there isn't really an "Iron" solution to bureaucracy (depending on what you mean by "Iron"). The best you can do is work to minimize the amount of it (akin to optimizing an algorithm so that it's more efficient), but some level or amount will always remain, and that amount is largely related to how large the organization is.
So unfortunately, there isn't really an "Iron" solution to bureaucracy (depending on what you mean by "Iron"). The best you can do is work to minimize the amount of it (akin to optimizing an algorithm so that it's more efficient), but some level or amount will always remain, and that amount is largely related to how large the organization is.
Alas, like so many things in life we can't "solve" it, we can only minimize the negative, better ourselves, and learn to cope with it.
>I've always wondered what the Iron Solution to Bureaucracy looks like.
Open Source?
Specifically, removing the power to coerce.
Open Source?
Specifically, removing the power to coerce.
Few if any people in an organization will admit that they are not devoted to the goals of the organization, and I think few senior people actually believe they are not devoted to those goals.
Further, it is difficult for many people in an organization to understand the contributions of people working in areas in which they are not expert, and thus it is easy to misunderstand whether they are devoted to the goals of the organization.
So I’m not sure this “Iron Law” can predict anything or help understand anything in a real world situation. It seems to boil to (roughly) “the bastards always win.”
Further, it is difficult for many people in an organization to understand the contributions of people working in areas in which they are not expert, and thus it is easy to misunderstand whether they are devoted to the goals of the organization.
So I’m not sure this “Iron Law” can predict anything or help understand anything in a real world situation. It seems to boil to (roughly) “the bastards always win.”
Thank you for posting this, I hadn't heard of it but it jives with my experience in very large companies.
Probably like every large organization.
Can confirm.
You guys were creating Java?
> ~1,000 classes in 1.1, ~10K in 1.2 the next year.
9K classes in a year sounds crazy as hell
> ~1,000 classes in 1.1, ~10K in 1.2 the next year.
9K classes in a year sounds crazy as hell
A typical well-designed class will usually be a few hundred lines of code, tops. Often less than 100 lines.
9k classes * 100-300 == 900k-2.7m LOC
Not TOO crazy for the most complete standard library ever developed, for a language meant from the beginning to take over enterprise business computing.
How many LOC are in whatever meme language is hype this year? Hell, I feel like I see nearly that many lines of console output, when I run NPM to pull in dependencies, lol.
9k classes * 100-300 == 900k-2.7m LOC
Not TOO crazy for the most complete standard library ever developed, for a language meant from the beginning to take over enterprise business computing.
How many LOC are in whatever meme language is hype this year? Hell, I feel like I see nearly that many lines of console output, when I run NPM to pull in dependencies, lol.
I think much of the maligning Java gets is either due to people looking at badly written Java (2k LOC classes, factories of factories of factories, 15 arg methods, import * everywhere, etc.), or claims in error because they are not based on modern Java (claiming bad parallelism a la Hensen, citing a lack of modules, noting no functional support).
I think Java is a good language if your problem space is ok with the GC and some other quirks.
The problem space I've been in has issues with GC, so C++ or Rust are the main choices there (Go too, but not my preference).
I think Java is a good language if your problem space is ok with the GC and some other quirks.
The problem space I've been in has issues with GC, so C++ or Rust are the main choices there (Go too, but not my preference).
I read comments like this all the time on HN and Reddit. But it's hard for me to separate real professional experience at day jobs, from hobbyist wishful thinking in personal side projects.
All I know is that I attend a lot of Java conferences and meetups, and I'm STILL waiting to encounter a flesh-and-blood human in real life whose employer really wavers between Java and Rust. That's like choosing between a Humvee and a submarine, their optimal problem spaces barely overlap.
All I know is that I attend a lot of Java conferences and meetups, and I'm STILL waiting to encounter a flesh-and-blood human in real life whose employer really wavers between Java and Rust. That's like choosing between a Humvee and a submarine, their optimal problem spaces barely overlap.
>That's like choosing between a Humvee and a submarine, their optimal problem spaces barely overlap.
You'd be surprised. For a lot of stuff Rust is a good fit, aside drivers and OSes, Java is too.
There are succesful full text search engines written in Java (Lucene, and Elasticsearch on top of it), there are succesful event streaming platforms written in Java (Kafka), there are succesful distributed data processing tools written in Java (Hadoop, Spark), databases (Cassandra), and very very high performance trading engines (LMAX), very high performing servers (rapidoid, smart-servlet), and other such things besides, all categories of which have been quite big domains for C/C++ (and thus something like Rust).
You'd be surprised. For a lot of stuff Rust is a good fit, aside drivers and OSes, Java is too.
There are succesful full text search engines written in Java (Lucene, and Elasticsearch on top of it), there are succesful event streaming platforms written in Java (Kafka), there are succesful distributed data processing tools written in Java (Hadoop, Spark), databases (Cassandra), and very very high performance trading engines (LMAX), very high performing servers (rapidoid, smart-servlet), and other such things besides, all categories of which have been quite big domains for C/C++ (and thus something like Rust).
Where I work some teams are using Java, and some are just starting to use Rust. Different problem spaces entirely though, as you said. I've seen Java used here for ETL work, Modeling & Sim work, web apps, and Android. I've seen Rust on two projects, both were real-time or near-real-time efforts.
The competition I am starting to see is between C++ and Rust, with the few teams looking at Rust loving it. I did recently help write a RFP response that noted software will be written in C++ and Rust, and the RFP was awarded to us.
I am in a different world though, as I am a contractor for the DOD. It's more like a lot of small to medium sized companies than one big company, which is why some groups can use Java and others C++ and others Rust.
I have the same problem of differentiating between hobbyists and professional experience, both on HN and when interviewing. I had someone tell me they knew Java, then found out they had done maybe 5 months of Java work and didn't know some of the most basic things.
As for myself, in terms of writing professional software for clients, I've done the following, in order of amounts worked: Java, C++, Python, Javascript, Erlang, R, Ruby, Clojure, C, Scala, and C#. I've done Rust and Elixir in personal projects, but not yet for clients. I plan to transition to a full-time Rust project in the coming years.
The competition I am starting to see is between C++ and Rust, with the few teams looking at Rust loving it. I did recently help write a RFP response that noted software will be written in C++ and Rust, and the RFP was awarded to us.
I am in a different world though, as I am a contractor for the DOD. It's more like a lot of small to medium sized companies than one big company, which is why some groups can use Java and others C++ and others Rust.
I have the same problem of differentiating between hobbyists and professional experience, both on HN and when interviewing. I had someone tell me they knew Java, then found out they had done maybe 5 months of Java work and didn't know some of the most basic things.
As for myself, in terms of writing professional software for clients, I've done the following, in order of amounts worked: Java, C++, Python, Javascript, Erlang, R, Ruby, Clojure, C, Scala, and C#. I've done Rust and Elixir in personal projects, but not yet for clients. I plan to transition to a full-time Rust project in the coming years.
Seeing a company (as opposed to a person) choose between Java and Rust would paint a very bleak picture for their future.
To me it's an indication that programmers are getting to run wild past the technical domain, after all trying to hire for a Java codebase vs a Rust codebase is enough to kill a company depending on the space due to salary expectations and availability alone.
To me it's an indication that programmers are getting to run wild past the technical domain, after all trying to hire for a Java codebase vs a Rust codebase is enough to kill a company depending on the space due to salary expectations and availability alone.
You can make a very good case for any organization to replace
Java => Go
C++ => Rust
The Database and System software that was created in 2000s very much was based on Java. But modern, performant Database and System software is written in Go/C++.
https://landscape.cncf.io/
Java => Go
C++ => Rust
The Database and System software that was created in 2000s very much was based on Java. But modern, performant Database and System software is written in Go/C++.
https://landscape.cncf.io/
I'd definitely take Kotlin over Go. That you can reuse the java codebase is a huge win, but even apart from that the language is a breath of fresh air.
Java has long been crippled beyond the regular GC limitations by lack of value types, but that’s finally, finally going away.
Explains why there are no production Java applications...
FTFY...
Explains why there are no high performance production Java applications...
Explains why there are no high performance production Java applications...
Yeah, other than Kafka, Spark, Cassandra, Flink, Hadoop, Elasticsearch what has Java ever done for us!
Given there are hft firms built on Java…
That's 36 classes per *day* (900/250 workdays)
I don't know how many people were working on that
but when developing standard library you do not really want to rush designs. You want to be very, very careful about it.
Here's a book about it from one of the most experienced people in API/Standard lib design on the planet
https://www.amazon.com/Framework-Design-Guidelines-Conventio...
I don't know how many people were working on that
but when developing standard library you do not really want to rush designs. You want to be very, very careful about it.
Here's a book about it from one of the most experienced people in API/Standard lib design on the planet
https://www.amazon.com/Framework-Design-Guidelines-Conventio...
I can't speak for grandparent commenter. However, I can point out that the standard library for Java 17 has a TOTAL of 4,388 classes. TODAY. A quarter-century after the timeframe that they're talking about:
https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/17/docs/api/allclasse...
So if ~10k classes were really written in a year, then I can only assume that most of that was the compiler or virtual machine runtime (i.e. C++ code) rather than the standard library Java code.
Regardless of how anyone feels about "verbosity" or "design patterns" in Java application code, the underlying JDK is pretty inarguably one of the most solid and impressive pieces of tech ever developed. I'm not throwing any rocks at that codebase.
https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/17/docs/api/allclasse...
So if ~10k classes were really written in a year, then I can only assume that most of that was the compiler or virtual machine runtime (i.e. C++ code) rather than the standard library Java code.
Regardless of how anyone feels about "verbosity" or "design patterns" in Java application code, the underlying JDK is pretty inarguably one of the most solid and impressive pieces of tech ever developed. I'm not throwing any rocks at that codebase.
>the underlying JDK is pretty inarguably one of the most solid and impressive pieces of tech ever developed.
I agree, JVM is impressive.
I agree, JVM is impressive.
I think the first part of a standard lib is pretty straightforward to design. String operations, math, standard protocols, I/O are petty well understood. It gets more tricky once you get to higher levels abstraction like UI.
Nio and streams API show that even those were not evident from the beginning of java.
> ... pretty straightforward to design. String operations ...
Tell that to Haskell.
Also, I've seen some pretty gnarly use of String in Java.
Tell that to Haskell.
Also, I've seen some pretty gnarly use of String in Java.
This is the kind of comment I come to HN for. That's a powerful insight on work estimation.
> A typical well-designed class will usually be a few hundred lines of code, tops. Often less than 100 lines.
It’s not the lines that take time; it’s getting the code to the “well-designed” state, double so (if not more) for an API.
It’s not the lines that take time; it’s getting the code to the “well-designed” state, double so (if not more) for an API.
Complete maybe, but it was not fun learning or using swing in college.
Creating new classes is easy. Keeping the number down while still restricting them to a well-defined responsibility each is actually hard.
Sounds about right for Java..
How many classes do you think it should have, ballpark, given the same feature set? GUI toolkits alone can produce thousands of classes because there are thousands of concepts that make sense to model, then add on security, collections, many utilities, XML handling, multiple RPC systems and so on. It's hard to over-state how large the Java standard library is.
And it's not like other ecosystems do better. The standard complaint about JS is that you try to do something basic in that ecosystem and discover you have 10,000 modules in node_modules. Not so different, really, except that the Java stuff comes from a single team with a relatively coherent design philosophy.
And it's not like other ecosystems do better. The standard complaint about JS is that you try to do something basic in that ecosystem and discover you have 10,000 modules in node_modules. Not so different, really, except that the Java stuff comes from a single team with a relatively coherent design philosophy.
If it is necessary to have that many classes, then there should be so many classes.
but in Java everything is a class, main function? in a class. a library of static functions? in a class.
but in Java everything is a class, main function? in a class. a library of static functions? in a class.
With an alternative design you'd need to have some other code container concept, but it'd be almost exactly the same as a class file. If the JVM also had a separate notion of a non-class file, just hold to hold static methods, then it'd boil down to duplicating the format. Most languages decide to make the source file the first-class container concept, or in native languages, the DLL/.so, but this isn't obviously better and comes with its own downsides. Orienting the VM around classes has a bunch of upsides that contribute to Java being successful.
The real complaint here is more about the syntax boilerplate involved in writing top level functions in Java that map to classes with static methods. Kotlin shows there's no deep reason why the Java language has to be written this way, it's just notation. They picked it to avoid complicating the language with special cases, but I can easily agree that smarter syntax is more important than the Java guys have historically believed. Kotlin is proving this at the moment.
The real complaint here is more about the syntax boilerplate involved in writing top level functions in Java that map to classes with static methods. Kotlin shows there's no deep reason why the Java language has to be written this way, it's just notation. They picked it to avoid complicating the language with special cases, but I can easily agree that smarter syntax is more important than the Java guys have historically believed. Kotlin is proving this at the moment.
Sure, classes act as namespaces in that case. What pain point does it cause?
Does the AbstractFactoryFactoryInterface and AbstractFactoryFactoryImpl count as two different classes...?
Kidding aside, I always found Java as a core language (and the basic standard library for it) to be mostly fine, but the weird architecture astronaut cult that hovered around it and infected many of the commonly used libraries to be a real problem.
Maybe things are different now for the language, I haven't touched it in many years at this point.
Kidding aside, I always found Java as a core language (and the basic standard library for it) to be mostly fine, but the weird architecture astronaut cult that hovered around it and infected many of the commonly used libraries to be a real problem.
Maybe things are different now for the language, I haven't touched it in many years at this point.
Yeah it was never the language or the core libs which were the problem, it was mostly some of the frameworks which had the FactoryFactory problem
I disagree with what I call Java's OOP obsession, but I have to admire the drive behind that ecosystem.
Sounds like a typical enterprise Java hello world type application.
The 90’s were a weird time.
One of the most famous examples was Jony Ive. Jony was recruited to Apple in 1992 after Steve left.
Jony did not come from NeXT, as many seem to believe.
Jony did not come from NeXT, as many seem to believe.
I did not work there, but I had a copy of this iconic June 1997 issue of Wired Magazine and managed to lose it somehow:
https://www.wired.com/2008/03/bz-apple-ourbad/
https://www.wired.com/2008/03/bz-apple-ourbad/
The Internet Archive has your back[0].
[0] https://archive.org/details/eu_Wired-1997-06_OCR
[0] https://archive.org/details/eu_Wired-1997-06_OCR
Lots of Apple ads in there. One for Power Macintosh and one for Messagepad 2000 (that I had never heard of / or I forgot about it).
Also, the ads tell a story of a consumer world that has changed since then. From professional life focused (back then) to indulgence and quick consumption focused now. Maybe WIRED knew their audience back then, and have a wider one on the internet now..
Also, the ads tell a story of a consumer world that has changed since then. From professional life focused (back then) to indulgence and quick consumption focused now. Maybe WIRED knew their audience back then, and have a wider one on the internet now..
I read about drastic staff / product cuts and re-focusing on the company, however that was always told from the outside.
Was someone working at Apple during that transition and has any interesting stories / can share their experience?