7 ms·

“How can they be so good?” the strange story of Skype (2013)

25 points by chermanowicz 8y ago

expertentipp 8y ago
Particular how fates of post-Communist countries like Poland/Czechia/Slovakia/Lithuania vs Estonia dispersed. The former chose a way of low-cost, outsourcing and offshoring for global hegemons, many emigrated to developed countries like UK or Germany - cutting off their chance of success. One from post-Communist country will always be an underdog there trying to navigate the complex realities, business connections, regulations. Meanwhile Estonia - extraordinary luck, lots of talent. Perhaps because it's a small country, cosy environment, one is less likely to emigrate? Proximity to and cultural similarities with Finland? Sad that both - Kazaa and Skype had become its own blown egg with only the brands surviving, Americans killed both.
- jhbadger 8y ago
  Also Estonia was home to the Institute of Cybernetics in Tallinn, which was one of the premier Soviet computer science institutes.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Czechia and Slovakia are still too corrupt and it used to be way worse.
  - expertentipp 8y ago
    I don't think Estonia had it any better in terms of corruption and organized crime - former Soviet republic, large Russian minority, Russian intelligence was surely giving them hard times.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      I'm not saying they had it better, I'm saying they got forward because they battled corruption better than Czechia and Slovakia did, while Czechia and Slovakia remain too corrupt to this day.
- rasz 8y ago
  How did Estonia handle transition period? Polish transformation was dominated by giving away national property, and mostly involved bribes. Deals like 1991 30 year _free_ lease for two huge factory buildings gifted to Levi Strauss in exchange for couple hundred $100/month jobs (1/2 average pay in Poland, 1/20 average US), buildings the city had to first borrow $700K to buy and renovate. Or PepsiCo paying $25 mil for privatized chocolate manufacturer(no debt), just to turn around and resell _one_ of their factories for $75mil. Etc etc, almost anything of value was sold for nothing.
  - expertentipp 8y ago
    The whole country on a backyard sale while population was chocked down ("shock therapy" - thanks, Balcerowicz and Jeffrey Sachs!). The largest innovation these reforms farted out in the IT domain was a PHP clone of Classmates. > Or PepsiCo paying $25 mil for privatized chocolate manufacturer(no debt), just to turn around and resell _one_ of their factories for $75mil The story of Wedel is a classic example of predatory business sucking out all the money from formely legit business while offering deteriorating quality ("ptasie mleczko" tastes like and has a quality of a turd, sorry).
T-A 8y ago
The article makes an attempt to answer the question in the title (cheap computers forced Eastern European programmers to be really efficient) but I am reminded of Paul Graham's "Beating the Averages" essay [1]: > It must have seemed to our competitors that we had some kind of secret weapon-- that we were decoding their Enigma traffic or something. In fact we did have a secret weapon, but it was simpler than they realized. No one was leaking news of their features to us. We were just able to develop software faster than anyone thought possible. PG and Robert Morris could do that because they had a "secret weapon" (LISP). The Skype developers had one too [2]: > Delphi was chosen because our first senior UI developer was very skilled at Delphi (besides dozen other languages-environments) and we saw D as most productive, fastest, efficient way to build our app given our team/lead developer skills and also getting very good UX on MSWin platform. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html [2] https://www.quora.com/What-programming-language-was-Skype-originally-written-in?s=1 https://www.quora.com/What-programming-language-was-Skype-or...
- beamatronic 8y ago
  I wonder why more folks don’t use Lisp, or Smalltalk for that matter, for back end development.
- expertentipp 8y ago
  > Estonia > Eastern European You just made a little Estonian girl cry.
  - T-A 8y ago
    Or maybe half a century of Soviet occupation made her cry?
  - unixhero 8y ago
    Well Baltic European state, ... is that better?
  - T-A 8y ago
    I am astonished to see that my previous reply to the above (completely off topic) comment has been flagged and downvoted to oblivion. If a country is located further East than Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Albania, former Yugoslavia and former East Germany; shares a long land border with Russia; and was a de facto part of the Soviet Union for the entire duration of the Cold War; then yes, of course it is an Eastern European country. How is stating that obvious fact a violation of any posting rules? If anything, it is the implied denigration of Eastern Europe that should be raising eyebrows.
yuhong 8y ago
My favorite is how Skype did things like making calls using SYSENTER and reading the BIOS using NTVDM before MS bought them. Of course, you won't see MS employees talk much about it.

25 points by chermanowicz 8y ago

Particular how fates of post-Communist countries like Poland/Czechia/Slovakia/Lithuania vs Estonia dispersed. The former chose a way of low-cost, outsourcing and offshoring for global hegemons, many emigrated to developed countries like UK or Germany - cutting off their chance of success. One from post-Communist country will always be an underdog there trying to navigate the complex realities, business connections, regulations. Meanwhile Estonia - extraordinary luck, lots of talent. Perhaps because it's a small country, cosy environment, one is less likely to emigrate? Proximity to and cultural similarities with Finland? Sad that both - Kazaa and Skype had become its own blown egg with only the brands surviving, Americans killed both.

jhbadger 8y ago
Also Estonia was home to the Institute of Cybernetics in Tallinn, which was one of the premier Soviet computer science institutes.
TomMarius 8y ago
Czechia and Slovakia are still too corrupt and it used to be way worse.
- expertentipp 8y ago
  I don't think Estonia had it any better in terms of corruption and organized crime - former Soviet republic, large Russian minority, Russian intelligence was surely giving them hard times.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    I'm not saying they had it better, I'm saying they got forward because they battled corruption better than Czechia and Slovakia did, while Czechia and Slovakia remain too corrupt to this day.
rasz 8y ago
How did Estonia handle transition period? Polish transformation was dominated by giving away national property, and mostly involved bribes. Deals like 1991 30 year _free_ lease for two huge factory buildings gifted to Levi Strauss in exchange for couple hundred $100/month jobs (1/2 average pay in Poland, 1/20 average US), buildings the city had to first borrow $700K to buy and renovate. Or PepsiCo paying $25 mil for privatized chocolate manufacturer(no debt), just to turn around and resell _one_ of their factories for $75mil. Etc etc, almost anything of value was sold for nothing.
- expertentipp 8y ago
  The whole country on a backyard sale while population was chocked down ("shock therapy" - thanks, Balcerowicz and Jeffrey Sachs!). The largest innovation these reforms farted out in the IT domain was a PHP clone of Classmates. > Or PepsiCo paying $25 mil for privatized chocolate manufacturer(no debt), just to turn around and resell _one_ of their factories for $75mil The story of Wedel is a classic example of predatory business sucking out all the money from formely legit business while offering deteriorating quality ("ptasie mleczko" tastes like and has a quality of a turd, sorry).

T-A 8y ago

The article makes an attempt to answer the question in the title (cheap computers forced Eastern European programmers to be really efficient) but I am reminded of Paul Graham's "Beating the Averages" essay [1]: > It must have seemed to our competitors that we had some kind of secret weapon-- that we were decoding their Enigma traffic or something. In fact we did have a secret weapon, but it was simpler than they realized. No one was leaking news of their features to us. We were just able to develop software faster than anyone thought possible. PG and Robert Morris could do that because they had a "secret weapon" (LISP). The Skype developers had one too [2]: > Delphi was chosen because our first senior UI developer was very skilled at Delphi (besides dozen other languages-environments) and we saw D as most productive, fastest, efficient way to build our app given our team/lead developer skills and also getting very good UX on MSWin platform. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html [2] https://www.quora.com/What-programming-language-was-Skype-originally-written-in?s=1 https://www.quora.com/What-programming-language-was-Skype-or...

beamatronic 8y ago
I wonder why more folks don’t use Lisp, or Smalltalk for that matter, for back end development.
expertentipp 8y ago
> Estonia > Eastern European You just made a little Estonian girl cry.
- T-A 8y ago
  Or maybe half a century of Soviet occupation made her cry?
- unixhero 8y ago
  Well Baltic European state, ... is that better?
- T-A 8y ago
  I am astonished to see that my previous reply to the above (completely off topic) comment has been flagged and downvoted to oblivion. If a country is located further East than Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Albania, former Yugoslavia and former East Germany; shares a long land border with Russia; and was a de facto part of the Soviet Union for the entire duration of the Cold War; then yes, of course it is an Eastern European country. How is stating that obvious fact a violation of any posting rules? If anything, it is the implied denigration of Eastern Europe that should be raising eyebrows.

yuhong 8y ago

My favorite is how Skype did things like making calls using SYSENTER and reading the BIOS using NTVDM before MS bought them. Of course, you won't see MS employees talk much about it.