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Hey all. I was the second engineer at famo.us and was later chief architect. I have many stories, but I won't go into any of them :-) If you were interested in

Hey all. I was the second engineer at famo.us and was later chief architect. I have many stories, but I won't go into any of them :-) If you were interested in the library and are sad that this pivot means it won't be supported, I want to mention there is ongoing work in the OSS community outside the company supporting the pre-pivot vision. I've personally been working on a fork called samsaraJS (http://samsaraJS.org http://samsaraJS.org), and there is another community effort at infamous.io. These are both early stage labors of love, and always looking for contributors!

idlewords 11y ago
Please write your stories down even if you don't share them with anyone. You may change your mind years later and the brain has a way of blotting the craziest stuff out over time.
faceyspacey 11y ago
I don't understand, I thought Famo.us was a startup along the lines of Meteor--both passionately committed to a vision for the future of javascript/web development, both having raised the around same amount of money ($30 million). I'm kidding--how could that be true when Famo.us was started by essentially a non-coder who touted his jQuery skills to falsely (and naively) present as though he was a coder. Did Steve even write a line of code. A startup this technical needs a super coder at the helm. In short, it should have been obvious to us outsiders that Famo.us was about nothing more than its unsuccessfully self-referential and self-serving name, "Fame." Like many, I bought into it though. I mean--minus the hype-style marketing that should have been a clear warning that this company is not to be trusted--they did clearly assert their vision: to kill the Native Problem for javascript developers. The fact that Steve was more concerned about money and making one of those type of startups, rather than hunker down with a small team and get a focused job done like the Meteor team has, astounds me. It's basically an outrage. How about hire a smaller team and not send them on wild goose hunts building stuff beyond the core vision. It's typical startup nonsense where inexperienced non-technical founders want to build the world and don't grasp the importance of focusing on a true MVP. I don't care that he was--i think--the #3 guy at Powerset, or that he kinda can code. From the looks of how busy he was at all the Famo.us marketing side of things, there's no way that guy was leading an engineering team--i.e. the only way this sort of grand vision could ever be accomplished. The messed up part is that what they finally released at the end seemed to be on point with what we need. The interface is on point. It's a great start at least. Had they been more focused they could have arrived their earlier. And then they could have stuck to their guns and stuck it out until their framework got an actual following. But they never got a following, and therefore (combined with his needs for Fame and Money) Steve felt the need to pivot. Had they had any semblance of a following/userbase, this wouldn't have happened. Seen this happen so many times. You know, get that fire burning under your initial small group of passionate customers like kindling, like Paul Graham always says. They certainly had the perfect marketing pitch to do it. All they had to do was take the vision to the bitter end like I hope Infamous.io or SamsaraJS does. For a while, as an outsider, I just figured they were suffering because the technology wasn't in fact possible. I.e. they couldn't truly get the performance needed for production apps. That they fell apart for any other reason is scandalous. I wish the best to anyone picking up their codebase. We still need this stuff! SMH.

idlewords 11y ago

Please write your stories down even if you don't share them with anyone. You may change your mind years later and the brain has a way of blotting the craziest stuff out over time.

faceyspacey 11y ago

I don't understand, I thought Famo.us was a startup along the lines of Meteor--both passionately committed to a vision for the future of javascript/web development, both having raised the around same amount of money ($30 million). I'm kidding--how could that be true when Famo.us was started by essentially a non-coder who touted his jQuery skills to falsely (and naively) present as though he was a coder. Did Steve even write a line of code. A startup this technical needs a super coder at the helm. In short, it should have been obvious to us outsiders that Famo.us was about nothing more than its unsuccessfully self-referential and self-serving name, "Fame." Like many, I bought into it though. I mean--minus the hype-style marketing that should have been a clear warning that this company is not to be trusted--they did clearly assert their vision: to kill the Native Problem for javascript developers. The fact that Steve was more concerned about money and making one of those type of startups, rather than hunker down with a small team and get a focused job done like the Meteor team has, astounds me. It's basically an outrage. How about hire a smaller team and not send them on wild goose hunts building stuff beyond the core vision. It's typical startup nonsense where inexperienced non-technical founders want to build the world and don't grasp the importance of focusing on a true MVP. I don't care that he was--i think--the #3 guy at Powerset, or that he kinda can code. From the looks of how busy he was at all the Famo.us marketing side of things, there's no way that guy was leading an engineering team--i.e. the only way this sort of grand vision could ever be accomplished. The messed up part is that what they finally released at the end seemed to be on point with what we need. The interface is on point. It's a great start at least. Had they been more focused they could have arrived their earlier. And then they could have stuck to their guns and stuck it out until their framework got an actual following. But they never got a following, and therefore (combined with his needs for Fame and Money) Steve felt the need to pivot. Had they had any semblance of a following/userbase, this wouldn't have happened. Seen this happen so many times. You know, get that fire burning under your initial small group of passionate customers like kindling, like Paul Graham always says. They certainly had the perfect marketing pitch to do it. All they had to do was take the vision to the bitter end like I hope Infamous.io or SamsaraJS does. For a while, as an outsider, I just figured they were suffering because the technology wasn't in fact possible. I.e. they couldn't truly get the performance needed for production apps. That they fell apart for any other reason is scandalous. I wish the best to anyone picking up their codebase. We still need this stuff! SMH.