10 ms·

How I built the IMDb message boards, in 2001

290 points by yread 10y ago

alex_hitchins 10y ago
I enjoyed reading this. These retrospection articles always make me think that somehow life as a dev was somewhat better back in the day. Perhaps it's just old age bring on cynicism, but I feel like I enjoyed development more a decade ago.
- colinstrickland 10y ago
  I'm not sure about better, but it was certainly a very different set of disciplines
  - MiddleEndian 10y ago
    My favorite "old development" story is the one about how the developers snuck into Apple to make Graphing Calculator, which is one of my favorite applications of all time.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - CharlesW 10y ago
      (For those who may not be familiar: https://www.pacifict.com/Story/ https://www.pacifict.com/Story/)
  - Rustydave 10y ago
    And was the pay better back then than it is now? Just curious
    - colinstrickland 10y ago
      hard to say. Salary was market rate. Stock was 2001-era amzn, which wasn't a bad deal
    - mikestew 10y ago
      Software salaries have always been good, usually a bit better than middle middle class. For contrast, I've worked as an auto mechanic. Good, middle-class living that. Left that for software, made a bit more money doing software. After a bit, but still before the dot-bomb, I went to work for Microsoft. Salary was shit, but the stock options were still enticing back then. All the dot-bombs were paying better, so MSFT upped the salaries. Based on performance reviews, I was apparently a pretty good employee, so the mileage of many might vary. But after one review I got a 35% salary bump that year in an effort to keep MSFT competitive. One more comparison: my responsibilities aren't much greater than they were back in the day, but I'd say I live a more comfortable lifestyle now than I did then. tl;dr: it's super-hard to make direct comparisons, but I'd say salaries are better now than back-in-the-day.
    - alex_hitchins 10y ago
      I'd say given inflation, cost of living etc, that pay back in the day was on average, over average for upper figure salaries. There are more devs/techies/IT literate people about these days so although there are sought after roles, positions are easier to fill these days. IMHO, Obvs.
bshimmin 10y ago
I once spent an evening in a darkened restaurant patio overwhelmed to tears as a kind man explained to me his young daughter, hospital-bound and dying of cancer, had used the Harry Potter IMDb boards as her main social life in her last year, and how much that had meant to him and her. For those of us who have fought an existential struggle throughout our careers with the random pointlessness of many of the things we get paid well to build, I think we can take a great measure of hope from this part of the story. Thank you for writing this long post, Colin, and thank you for the IMDb message boards.
- anc84 10y ago
  Providing topical community services can be extremely rewarding but at the same time extremely tiring. I run a website dedicated to something technical from the nineties. There is a bunch of attention-whoring weirdos but the 2-3 people per year telling you how much the community and your interaction matters to them makes all up for it. To me forums are still the best thing about the internet. Forums with simple threads, post count based user titles, avatars, nicknames and strict topics. You can be yourself in many different ways, one "persona" per topical forum. No one would know who you are or care about your sex, race or political orientation. anc84 is me here for example, nothing matters but the content of my posts.
  - usmannk 10y ago
    What is the topic of the website, if you don't mind?
    - anc84 10y ago
      For the purpose of keeping my online personas separatly, nope ;) It's just a forum with some bells.
  - PuffinBlue 10y ago
    I host one for an open source tool (although most replies come from the maintainer). It's mostly technical/support in nature and I really locked down the board (no signatures, no PM etc etc) because we're not really trying to build a community - but the tool really does make a big difference to some peoples lives. It made enough of a difference to mine to want to give back and start the forum in the first place, such is the power of these things! Little stories come up now and then through the questions people ask and it's possible to see how they're using the tool. It's like forums just bring life to the surface even if you fight to stop it, it's a genuinely compelling form of social interaction. Aside from the spam. The thanks that comes along is infrequent but very nice to receive.
b__d 10y ago
What a nice read, thank you very much for sharing!
bungie4 10y ago
As an old timer that was around pre original dot com boom, this made me smile. It was a simpler, horrible and fantastic time - in hindsight.
calewis 10y ago
Fascinating and well written. Thank-you.
mwest 10y ago
Thanks for taking the time to write this! Thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's been some time since I've even thought of mod_perl... A graph of whimsy: http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.201701/apachemods.html?mod=cGVybA== http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.201701/apache...
ars 10y ago
That was great to read. As soon as he said mod_perl I knew where things were headed. Having used both mod_perl and PHP (and ColdFusion - anyone remember that?), perl was just a nightmare to use well for this. Then when he talked about the custom templates written in perl? That's why PHP was invented, because at its core it is a template language. (i.e. the pages are HTML, with code inside them, rather than code, and HTML is treated as a string.) I suspect that if the forums had been written in PHP they would not be getting shut down right now. And yes, I know that people love to hate on PHP (including the author who said he disliked PHP because he didn't use it). But sometimes the tools you choose make a huge difference. It was a great writeup though, really brought back memories.
- proaralyst 10y ago
  Are you suggesting that if the boards were written in PHP they'd still be alive or that they'd have been shut down long ago?
  - ars 10y ago
    That they'd still be alive. Mainly because maintenance, and equally important, new features, would be easier. The poor reputation of PHP is from bad PHP by bad programmers, use a good programmer (as he seems to be) and the "boost" you get from using PHP would lead to much easier to maintain code. i.e. the same boost that lets a bad programmer get something running in PHP can take a good programmer and make him even better. Perl is a powerful language, but it's not well suited for making web pages.
    - colinstrickland 10y ago
      I wouldn't claim to be a good programmer, but I would point out that back then my exposure to PHP was PHP version 3, and version 4 was only just getting established.
      - ars 10y ago
        Don't sell yourself short. It's easy to see in hindsight that mod_perl was a mistake, but back then it was hardly obvious - in fact it seemed like mod_perl was poised to take over. Personally I only switched to PHP around 2003/2004 when I realized it was more productive than perl, so I'm not faulting you at all. I would have chosen the exact same language as you in 2001. Or maybe ColdFusion if it was a windows shop. PS. Sorry for coming across as critical, I didn't mean it that way. I was talking only in a retrospective kind of view.
mccolin 10y ago
Reading this really brought me back -- to my earliest days as a developer and to the many hours I'd spent on the IMDb boards! Thank you!
misiti3780 10y ago
If everyone is so concerned about these boards going away, why doesnt someone just export the entire database and re-import it into some open source forum software so people can just continue to comment there. I dont think this is trivial, but it could be done with some effort.
- lazyant 10y ago
  would IMDB's ToS be OK with this?
- tastythrowaway 10y ago
  but who will pay for the bandwidth?
  - seiferteric 10y ago
    Why can't there be some project that can take static export of sites and serve them via torrent or IPFS https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs like system. Users who care about this stuff could then pool their bandwidth and storage to keep these things alive, if only in a static form for historical preservation.
  - misiti3780 10y ago
    how much could a bill like this possibly be per month ? if people are so interested in keeping the forums, you could try to ask for donations ?
    - tastythrowaway 10y ago
      I would guess it's expensive enough to get cut, right? People could donate, sure. It would still need dedicated resources. It's a popular enough service to need high concurrency and reasonably high availability - at least for peak usage, like when the new trailer for the next great trilogy drops.
  - hellofunk 10y ago
    all the ads!
facepalm 10y ago
Nice read, although I have to say, 2001 I took my first job as a web developer, writing Java apps that would run on Tomcat. Back then Java was a revelation after fumbling with perl - the experience that code would actually work the first time it was run was amazing... (these days I am tired of Java, though).
tony2016 10y ago
The threaded replies model was stupid. If a post had 20 replies, I have to click 20 times. Each click to show one reply. Many of the replies were moronic. I ended up just reading the main posts only. I used many threaded discussion software. The one IMDb used was the most annoying. I have never seen it used on any other site. I guessed it must have been developed in-house and wondered why they never enhanced it.
- exodust 10y ago
  I guess you never noticed the "nest" link to change the view... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261392/board/nest/132924312?p=1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261392/board/nest/132924312?p=1
  - tony2016 10y ago
    I didn't after all these years! They should have made it the default. I mean who prefers to click more than they need to!

290 points by yread 10y ago

I enjoyed reading this. These retrospection articles always make me think that somehow life as a dev was somewhat better back in the day. Perhaps it's just old age bring on cynicism, but I feel like I enjoyed development more a decade ago.

colinstrickland 10y ago
I'm not sure about better, but it was certainly a very different set of disciplines
- MiddleEndian 10y ago
  My favorite "old development" story is the one about how the developers snuck into Apple to make Graphing Calculator, which is one of my favorite applications of all time.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - CharlesW 10y ago
    (For those who may not be familiar: https://www.pacifict.com/Story/ https://www.pacifict.com/Story/)
- Rustydave 10y ago
  And was the pay better back then than it is now? Just curious
  - colinstrickland 10y ago
    hard to say. Salary was market rate. Stock was 2001-era amzn, which wasn't a bad deal
  - mikestew 10y ago
    Software salaries have always been good, usually a bit better than middle middle class. For contrast, I've worked as an auto mechanic. Good, middle-class living that. Left that for software, made a bit more money doing software. After a bit, but still before the dot-bomb, I went to work for Microsoft. Salary was shit, but the stock options were still enticing back then. All the dot-bombs were paying better, so MSFT upped the salaries. Based on performance reviews, I was apparently a pretty good employee, so the mileage of many might vary. But after one review I got a 35% salary bump that year in an effort to keep MSFT competitive. One more comparison: my responsibilities aren't much greater than they were back in the day, but I'd say I live a more comfortable lifestyle now than I did then. tl;dr: it's super-hard to make direct comparisons, but I'd say salaries are better now than back-in-the-day.
  - alex_hitchins 10y ago
    I'd say given inflation, cost of living etc, that pay back in the day was on average, over average for upper figure salaries. There are more devs/techies/IT literate people about these days so although there are sought after roles, positions are easier to fill these days. IMHO, Obvs.

bshimmin 10y ago

I once spent an evening in a darkened restaurant patio overwhelmed to tears as a kind man explained to me his young daughter, hospital-bound and dying of cancer, had used the Harry Potter IMDb boards as her main social life in her last year, and how much that had meant to him and her. For those of us who have fought an existential struggle throughout our careers with the random pointlessness of many of the things we get paid well to build, I think we can take a great measure of hope from this part of the story. Thank you for writing this long post, Colin, and thank you for the IMDb message boards.

anc84 10y ago
Providing topical community services can be extremely rewarding but at the same time extremely tiring. I run a website dedicated to something technical from the nineties. There is a bunch of attention-whoring weirdos but the 2-3 people per year telling you how much the community and your interaction matters to them makes all up for it. To me forums are still the best thing about the internet. Forums with simple threads, post count based user titles, avatars, nicknames and strict topics. You can be yourself in many different ways, one "persona" per topical forum. No one would know who you are or care about your sex, race or political orientation. anc84 is me here for example, nothing matters but the content of my posts.
- usmannk 10y ago
  What is the topic of the website, if you don't mind?
  - anc84 10y ago
    For the purpose of keeping my online personas separatly, nope ;) It's just a forum with some bells.
- PuffinBlue 10y ago
  I host one for an open source tool (although most replies come from the maintainer). It's mostly technical/support in nature and I really locked down the board (no signatures, no PM etc etc) because we're not really trying to build a community - but the tool really does make a big difference to some peoples lives. It made enough of a difference to mine to want to give back and start the forum in the first place, such is the power of these things! Little stories come up now and then through the questions people ask and it's possible to see how they're using the tool. It's like forums just bring life to the surface even if you fight to stop it, it's a genuinely compelling form of social interaction. Aside from the spam. The thanks that comes along is infrequent but very nice to receive.

b__d 10y ago

What a nice read, thank you very much for sharing!

bungie4 10y ago

As an old timer that was around pre original dot com boom, this made me smile. It was a simpler, horrible and fantastic time - in hindsight.

calewis 10y ago

Fascinating and well written. Thank-you.

mwest 10y ago

Thanks for taking the time to write this! Thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's been some time since I've even thought of mod_perl... A graph of whimsy: http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.201701/apachemods.html?mod=cGVybA== http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.201701/apache...

ars 10y ago

That was great to read. As soon as he said mod_perl I knew where things were headed. Having used both mod_perl and PHP (and ColdFusion - anyone remember that?), perl was just a nightmare to use well for this. Then when he talked about the custom templates written in perl? That's why PHP was invented, because at its core it is a template language. (i.e. the pages are HTML, with code inside them, rather than code, and HTML is treated as a string.) I suspect that if the forums had been written in PHP they would not be getting shut down right now. And yes, I know that people love to hate on PHP (including the author who said he disliked PHP because he didn't use it). But sometimes the tools you choose make a huge difference. It was a great writeup though, really brought back memories.

proaralyst 10y ago
Are you suggesting that if the boards were written in PHP they'd still be alive or that they'd have been shut down long ago?
- ars 10y ago
  That they'd still be alive. Mainly because maintenance, and equally important, new features, would be easier. The poor reputation of PHP is from bad PHP by bad programmers, use a good programmer (as he seems to be) and the "boost" you get from using PHP would lead to much easier to maintain code. i.e. the same boost that lets a bad programmer get something running in PHP can take a good programmer and make him even better. Perl is a powerful language, but it's not well suited for making web pages.
  - colinstrickland 10y ago
    I wouldn't claim to be a good programmer, but I would point out that back then my exposure to PHP was PHP version 3, and version 4 was only just getting established.
    - ars 10y ago
      Don't sell yourself short. It's easy to see in hindsight that mod_perl was a mistake, but back then it was hardly obvious - in fact it seemed like mod_perl was poised to take over. Personally I only switched to PHP around 2003/2004 when I realized it was more productive than perl, so I'm not faulting you at all. I would have chosen the exact same language as you in 2001. Or maybe ColdFusion if it was a windows shop. PS. Sorry for coming across as critical, I didn't mean it that way. I was talking only in a retrospective kind of view.

mccolin 10y ago

Reading this really brought me back -- to my earliest days as a developer and to the many hours I'd spent on the IMDb boards! Thank you!

misiti3780 10y ago

If everyone is so concerned about these boards going away, why doesnt someone just export the entire database and re-import it into some open source forum software so people can just continue to comment there. I dont think this is trivial, but it could be done with some effort.

lazyant 10y ago
would IMDB's ToS be OK with this?
tastythrowaway 10y ago
but who will pay for the bandwidth?
- seiferteric 10y ago
  Why can't there be some project that can take static export of sites and serve them via torrent or IPFS https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs like system. Users who care about this stuff could then pool their bandwidth and storage to keep these things alive, if only in a static form for historical preservation.
- misiti3780 10y ago
  how much could a bill like this possibly be per month ? if people are so interested in keeping the forums, you could try to ask for donations ?
  - tastythrowaway 10y ago
    I would guess it's expensive enough to get cut, right? People could donate, sure. It would still need dedicated resources. It's a popular enough service to need high concurrency and reasonably high availability - at least for peak usage, like when the new trailer for the next great trilogy drops.
- hellofunk 10y ago
  all the ads!

facepalm 10y ago

Nice read, although I have to say, 2001 I took my first job as a web developer, writing Java apps that would run on Tomcat. Back then Java was a revelation after fumbling with perl - the experience that code would actually work the first time it was run was amazing... (these days I am tired of Java, though).

tony2016 10y ago

The threaded replies model was stupid. If a post had 20 replies, I have to click 20 times. Each click to show one reply. Many of the replies were moronic. I ended up just reading the main posts only. I used many threaded discussion software. The one IMDb used was the most annoying. I have never seen it used on any other site. I guessed it must have been developed in-house and wondered why they never enhanced it.

exodust 10y ago
I guess you never noticed the "nest" link to change the view... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261392/board/nest/132924312?p=1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261392/board/nest/132924312?p=1
- tony2016 10y ago
  I didn't after all these years! They should have made it the default. I mean who prefers to click more than they need to!