In February 2009, antirez's friend David Welton helped him share Redis to the world on Hacker News. The response was pretty muted; apart from David, only four people responded. Three of them said there were already similar projects out there, and only one person responded positively and offered to help.
So don't worry if you don't immediately get traction.
Oh... hey, I remember that. antirez and I used to work together at Linuxcare Italy. He's always been a bright guy, and also just a really pleasant person to hang out with.
I think this also points to something a bit more subtle, but obvious now that we're looking back on this in hindsight an calling antirez a legendary hacker. That is, sometimes it's not what you do but how you do it. Redis would not be where it is today were it not for his incredible effort to keep the quality high and the code performant. It's entirely true that a lot of what redis did was already done at the time it was released. It's also true that in the end that's not what mattered.
The response was pretty muted; apart from David, only four people responded. Three of them said there were already similar projects out there, and only one person responded positively and offered to help.
It's still pretty useful, as an outsider, as then the creator can hopefully explain the difference, if it's not already outlined in whatever gets submitted.
It was also still on the frontpage, so not sure I'd say muted. I'm sure it led to many people trying it out, some giving feedback, others eventually contributing. The effect can be bigger than just comments in the submission itself.
I also like how this was born in Italy, just getting stuff done for work, far from the crazy world of SV, yet it generalized to the needs of fast startups, and now it is a standard piece of infra. Too good to ignore springs to mind.
So don't worry if you don't immediately get traction.
There's so much truth to this. I've got a wacky project that is a crazy platform ( https://www.adama-platform.com/ ), and I've started to test my thesis by hiring a few contractors via upwork.
I found this great kid that just got to work and made a game! It feels fantastic just to see someone use something that I made as a creative tool.
I've got a lot to work on, but I'm keeping the faith going strong.
I don't think you realise just how many of your posts link to this project. It doesn't seem like you are able to respond to a HN comment/post without linking your project.
IOW, you aren't able to hold a conversation without reference to your project. This is probably not healthy - I mean, surely you have opinions that aren't colored by your project, and you have interests that aren't linked to your project?
I still think it's healthy to have multiple interests that you engage others with, but I also accept that in some contexts focus can appear as obsession.
I had a look at the project. Looks very interesting, but for something like this code examples = marketing. I don't believe the buzzwords, and can't make sense of what it is. My best guess is it is like a "backend react for permanent state"... maybe?
I'm going to be revamping the marketing as I'm on-boarding a customer since I'm transitioning towards "concierge engineering company/studio". I've got a thesis that I can beat the averages (in the pg sense: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html ) with the platform, but the strategy is hush-hush right now.
Thanks. And sorry I meant to say I don’t believe in buzzwords!
Just watch 20m of the video will finish off later. Some thoughts:
* Sounds like it has some good qualities of Elm (domain specific language that reduces complexity) and Phoenix (in the channels etc.)
* I work somewhere where they do a OS process mirroring the front end and there is a bunch of issues you don’t have to worry about. I have not looked at a single SQL query plan since working there, whereas it is regular elsewhere. It does come with challenges for “big data” though as RAM is costly vs. disk space. But maybe you have ideas for that.
* Your system would probably add some ops challenges around load balancing processes and RAM but that could be offloaded to the cloud. Maybe Kubernetes could help here?
* But for most apps it is probably not an issue!
* After thinking Firebase makes web dev simple and realizing no it makes it way more complex I sympathise with a lot of points. Firebase makes the atoms so small that you are constantly worrying about 2, 3, 4 phase commits and how to tell the user that you partially fucked up!
* Seems very promising!
* I have questions but i’ll watch more see if they get answered
Thanks for checking out the video. It's a work in the progress.
On the note about load balancing, it's exceptionally hard. However, I have the ability to migrate traffic (poorly tested) and re-balance. In general, stream load balancing is a challenge on many fronts. However, I consider myself an expert as I was the architect of https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3477132.3483572 at Facebook. On this topic, my only regret is that I have to outdo myself since I (foolishly) patented an awesome protocol ( https://patents.google.com/patent/US11228626B1/en ).
Comments
A legendary hacker.
So don't worry if you don't immediately get traction.
Oh... hey, I remember that. antirez and I used to work together at Linuxcare Italy. He's always been a bright guy, and also just a really pleasant person to hang out with.
Thank you so much for your kind words, David. I hope soon or later we will meet again :)
Here's that first thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494649
That thread went really well. Whoever said it went badly was way off. Fantastic work.
I agree. 2009 was really a long time ago. 23 points was enough to be the #22 most upvoted article of that day https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-02-25
That was before the front page was logged — those are just sorted by upvotes. I wish it were possible to time machine it.
Luckily, thanks to Dan, maybe someone will be able to time machine your new project once it gets mega popular. :)
(I'm not sure what my point was here, since you were correct that it was the 22nd most upvoted article that day. Sorry.)
I love the comment with the ruby implementation, which became the official ruby lib I am still using today!
Upvoted! ;-)
Too late.
I think this also points to something a bit more subtle, but obvious now that we're looking back on this in hindsight an calling antirez a legendary hacker. That is, sometimes it's not what you do but how you do it. Redis would not be where it is today were it not for his incredible effort to keep the quality high and the code performant. It's entirely true that a lot of what redis did was already done at the time it was released. It's also true that in the end that's not what mattered.
It's still pretty useful, as an outsider, as then the creator can hopefully explain the difference, if it's not already outlined in whatever gets submitted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-02-25
It was also still on the frontpage, so not sure I'd say muted. I'm sure it led to many people trying it out, some giving feedback, others eventually contributing. The effect can be bigger than just comments in the submission itself.
I also like how this was born in Italy, just getting stuff done for work, far from the crazy world of SV, yet it generalized to the needs of fast startups, and now it is a standard piece of infra. Too good to ignore springs to mind.
There's so much truth to this. I've got a wacky project that is a crazy platform ( https://www.adama-platform.com/ ), and I've started to test my thesis by hiring a few contractors via upwork.
I found this great kid that just got to work and made a game! It feels fantastic just to see someone use something that I made as a creative tool.
I've got a lot to work on, but I'm keeping the faith going strong.
Very off-topic, but ...
I don't think you realise just how many of your posts link to this project. It doesn't seem like you are able to respond to a HN comment/post without linking your project.
IOW, you aren't able to hold a conversation without reference to your project. This is probably not healthy - I mean, surely you have opinions that aren't colored by your project, and you have interests that aren't linked to your project?
If his self-promotion is on topic when he posts it, as it was here, I don't really see what the issue is supposed to be.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about his promotion.
Look at almost every regular poster on HN - they all have more than one type of comment. GP has only one type of comment (his project).
I dunno if it is really healthy to obsess over only a single thing, especially (IIRC) GP made a HN post some time back about burnout.
The word is "focused", and the burnout I was speaking diluting my focus too much and stalling out which I foresaw (as this isn't my first rodeo).
I could talk more about the month long RV trip through the southwest where my wife and I saw the Grand Canyon? But, is that relevant? :shrug:
"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." - Bruce Lee
It's funny you mentioned focus. Until recently I had a lot of trouble maintaining focus.
I just complained about it in a different thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35905529
I still think it's healthy to have multiple interests that you engage others with, but I also accept that in some contexts focus can appear as obsession.
I mean... it's a big project that overlaps with many areas?
I do realize because I'm a shameless self promoter looking for like minds.
I had a look at the project. Looks very interesting, but for something like this code examples = marketing. I don't believe the buzzwords, and can't make sense of what it is. My best guess is it is like a "backend react for permanent state"... maybe?
I have a poorly done video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWYgChA_aYA
I'm going to be revamping the marketing as I'm on-boarding a customer since I'm transitioning towards "concierge engineering company/studio". I've got a thesis that I can beat the averages (in the pg sense: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html ) with the platform, but the strategy is hush-hush right now.
Thanks. And sorry I meant to say I don’t believe in buzzwords!
Just watch 20m of the video will finish off later. Some thoughts:
* Sounds like it has some good qualities of Elm (domain specific language that reduces complexity) and Phoenix (in the channels etc.)
* I work somewhere where they do a OS process mirroring the front end and there is a bunch of issues you don’t have to worry about. I have not looked at a single SQL query plan since working there, whereas it is regular elsewhere. It does come with challenges for “big data” though as RAM is costly vs. disk space. But maybe you have ideas for that.
* Your system would probably add some ops challenges around load balancing processes and RAM but that could be offloaded to the cloud. Maybe Kubernetes could help here?
* But for most apps it is probably not an issue!
* After thinking Firebase makes web dev simple and realizing no it makes it way more complex I sympathise with a lot of points. Firebase makes the atoms so small that you are constantly worrying about 2, 3, 4 phase commits and how to tell the user that you partially fucked up!
* Seems very promising!
* I have questions but i’ll watch more see if they get answered
Thanks for checking out the video. It's a work in the progress.
On the note about load balancing, it's exceptionally hard. However, I have the ability to migrate traffic (poorly tested) and re-balance. In general, stream load balancing is a challenge on many fronts. However, I consider myself an expert as I was the architect of https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3477132.3483572 at Facebook. On this topic, my only regret is that I have to outdo myself since I (foolishly) patented an awesome protocol ( https://patents.google.com/patent/US11228626B1/en ).
Feel free to reach out!