13 ms·

A lot of folks seem to think this kind of technology needs to be marketed or launched the way a hip Silicon Valley startup should be. I understand how the argum

by zsck 8y ago

A lot of folks seem to think this kind of technology needs to be marketed or launched the way a hip Silicon Valley startup should be. I understand how the argument that critical mass is the necessary ingredient for success would appeal to people, but it’s not like the Internet succeeded that way. In fact, it’s probably better if foundational technology like this is developed and grown more slowly and deliberately. I have no idea if solid will take off the way the web has, but it stands a fighting chance. More than being a “viable competitor” to the web, it needs to be a platform that people want to develop for. As with the web, cloud and mobile ecosystems, the platform that developers want to support is the one that wins. If you want to see something like solid take off, play around with it for a bit. Try making it go and share your experience.

egonschiele 8y ago
> the platform that developers want to support is the one that wins. This is very hard to believe. Developers hate apple, facebook, and countless other platforms that are doing very well. Adoption is the fundamental problem, not what developers want to support. The platform with the most users is what people will develop for.
- true_religion 8y ago
  I think you may be in a bubble. Many developers like apple, and facebook enough to work for them. In fact, its that which keeps both platforms viable in the face of stiff competiton and shallow moats.
  - skosch 8y ago
    You're talking past each other: contributing to the App Store isn't the same as working for Apple.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    Facebook has a shallow moat? People only use it at all because of the network effect. And Apple's main draw is the large number of affluent customers. They'll have developers as long as they have those users, whether the developers like it or not. Which is why they can get away with charging 30% to developers when platforms have historically given incentives to developers to develop for their platform.
    - true_religion 8y ago
      That is a bit circular to say developers like Apple because they like money, thus Apple is not truly liked for itself. Apple was successful in building a platform because it's in house developers were capable of putting together something that was popolar with many people. They built on that to make more money by allowing other developers to use their platform. However two things come to mind: 1. Competency is not a moat. If Apple loses developers it's next product will not be so much better than competition that it's success will maintain against erosion. 2. For all people talk about associating with necessary evils; when you associate with someone long enough, you begin to think they are not evil. Thus it seems reasonable to think developers do not hate Apple, if they work with Apple.
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        > That is a bit circular to say developers like Apple because they like money, thus Apple is not truly liked for itself. It's almost as if users patronize Comcast because they like internet access and Comcast is not truly liked for itself. It's almost as if drivers patronize the DMV because they like driving without being arrested and the DMV is not truly liked for itself. There is a big difference between needing something and liking it. > Apple was successful in building a platform because it's in house developers were capable of putting together something that was popolar with many people. They built on that to make more money by allowing other developers to use their platform. But who are they to be allowing anything? GE makes a fine electrical distribution panel but that doesn't mean they get to decide what kind of lamp or microwave or laptop I can use with it. > 1. Competency is not a moat. If Apple loses developers it's next product will not be so much better than competition that it's success will maintain against erosion. Network effects are a moat. Apple had the first mover advantage, so they had the initial users and the developers follow the users. Then the users stay because the developers are there and the developers have no choice but to stay if they want access to those users. The users could switch to Android -- most of them already have. But the developers can't make the remaining users move outside of some sufficiently large organized boycott, which are notoriously difficult to effectuate because of the coordination problem. > 2. For all people talk about associating with necessary evils; when you associate with someone long enough, you begin to think they are not evil. Thus it seems reasonable to think developers do not hate Apple, if they work with Apple. By this logic the most beloved entity in the country should be the IRS. And if people had to file four times a year instead of once they would like them even more.
- photik 8y ago
  Apples and Oranges. Your analysis is after the fact, and those arenas aren't open development environments. Adoption follows content creation. Not every time, but the essence of the sentiment 'build it and they will come,' shouldn't be dismissed.
- PaulHoule 8y ago
  If developers hate Apple then why do they buy macs?
  - symfoniq 8y ago
    I’m seeing less and less developers buy Macs...
    - andrewmutz 8y ago
      In favor of linux? Chrome books?
      - pmlnr 8y ago
        Developers are moving away from Apple hardware, that is quite visible. The operating system is a much better question, that is hard to answer - given the fact that linux runs on anything, Window runs on a lot of things, and Hackintosh exists.
      - PaulHoule 8y ago
        Windows. One reason the world is so screwed up in 2018 is that people think they have to get everything for free. Thus "your smartphone" is really an extension of other people's brands. It's not a tool to control your environment but a way sinister forces in the environment control you. I like Linux for certain things but since you don't pay for it you influenced by the priorities of those who do pay: IBM, Google, the corporate customers of Red Hat. Since you do pay for Windows and you do have a choice, Microsoft is working for you and there is an incentive to make the OS better.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Only those using Macs as pretty UNIX. There are other kinds of developers.
  - twelve40 8y ago
    Why would you ask such a weird question? Is Apple an all-encompassing, lifetime sect? all or nothing? I like developing on my MacBook but I hope to God I will never have to write a line of code for the walled garden iOS, though I may not even get a choice at some point. Sometimes Apple makes very nice and useful things, sometimes some things they make are really shitty, other large parts of what they do I hate very much, like their monopolistic control freak tendencies.
- Aunche 8y ago
  Developers love Apple. They don't have to worry whether their apps will work on a million different Android devices.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    There's more than one developer out there. Developers do hate Apple. Other developers may love it.
  - flukus 8y ago
    Some developers love them, but as a developer myself the idea that I need apples permissions to run my own apps on my own machine makes my skin crawl. If early computing was a walled garden environment like iOS I never would have been a developer.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Early computing was a kind of walled garden. Each computer system was its own eco-system with special hardware features. The PC was the exception to it, only because IBM wasn't too clever about securing the platform like everyone else.
- andreygrehov 8y ago
  I honestly don't believe that developers hate Apple/Facebook.
- dboreham 8y ago
  I remember when Facebook was very developer-friendly (2006-ish). Significantly different experience at the time developing applications for FB vs Myspace and the lesser social networking platforms of the age.
- zsck 8y ago
  This is pretty clearly not the case. Apple and Facebook are companies, not platforms. The platforms these companies develop are wildly successful and loved by developers. I think you may be too focused on how developers decide a platform that is already successful. In that case, yes, which one is already adopted the most deserves strong consideration. However, when it comes to actually achieving adoption, it’s the platform that developers flock to that tend to succeed, all else being equal. We are talking about relatively fresh terrain here. There isn’t already a huge federated system like this that has a lot of mainstream adoption.
  - johncolanduoni 8y ago
    > However, when it comes to actually achieving adoption, it’s the platform that developers flock to that tend to succeed, all else being equal. Perhaps, but I struggle to think of two comparable platforms with similar user adoption and significantly different developer interest, outside of there being different sets of developers that hate/love each (c.f. iOS and Android). I'm definitely not aware of any examples indicating a platform can be saved or damned by developers loving/hating it: e.g. most developers hated developing for the PS3 initially but it didn't fare badly in the console wars. Xbox One however did do much worse than the PS4 because fewer users wanted it.
    - lelandbatey 8y ago
      Arguably, Linux owning the back end development space so completely is due to developer preference. But I think you do have a point. It's not just developer preference, there are other big factors like feature offered and ease of entry that determine likelihood of success.
      - baq 8y ago
        > Arguably, Linux owning the back end development space so completely is due to developer preference. and why is that possible? it's because the backend is decoupled from where the users are.
- drb91 8y ago
  I’m not sure I follow developers hating Apple when 99% of the engineers I see use an apple laptop. As to facebook, we’ll see if it survives. There’s not much to use it for aside from advertising as a platform, and I’ve heard nothing but negatives about return on ads.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    Plenty of people hate things they are stuck with for lack of usable alternatives
    - drb91 8y ago
      Maybe. I just don’t see a shred of evidence developers generally hate Apple.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  Most developers I know use MacBooks, my own staff included. Most JS developers quite like stuff like react, and most api developers like graphQL. So while developers may dislike Facebook as a company, they don’t seem to dislike Facebook tools. I don’t think the platform that developers like will necessarily take of though.
  - feanaro 8y ago
    > Most developers I know use MacBooks, my own staff included I'm just letting you know that we both apparently have very biased samples on this matter.
    - eksemplar 8y ago
      Yes, people are different. :) When I was 20 years younger most developers I knew loved Linux. So maybe she plays in. I know I left gentoo for a Mac in 2006 and I’ve never looked back. I don’t dislike Linux by the way, I just don’t want to spend time configuring things anymore.
      - spiritcat 8y ago
        perhaps gentoo was not a good fit for you? currently develop on mac but still linux at home
        eksemplar 8y ago
        Gentoo was certainly a terrible fit, but I've had my runs with Debian, ubuntu and fedora as well, and it somehow always ends up being configuration hell, which then breaks with some random update, prompting me to do it all over. These days it's more than that though. I mean, I'm completely drenched in the apple eco-system, and it's kind of nice to get iMessages on my MacBook and sharing data between devices so easily. I now I could setup something similar with stuff like own cloud, but then I'd have to do that, instead of it just working out the box. Like I said, I don't dislike linux. I've never really disliked an OS until windows 10, but I just don't bother with technology that isn't designed for user experience anymore. Like my first smartphone was an android, I don't think I'll ever own an android phone again. :p
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  "Developers hate apple, facebook, and countless other platforms that are doing very well. " No, most developers don't hate anything. Most developers are just normal people makin' stuff because their company pays them to. Most developers are not particularly ideological. Just some of us are ... perhaps a little bit more than in other industries.
  - voidifremoved 8y ago
    It isn't about ideology it is about ease and quality. Facebook is legendary for introducing breaking changes to their API without warning, for having terrible documentation, baroque and inconsistent APIs, flaky behaviour and broken examples. Whatever you think of Facebook the company, Facebook the API is something everyone I know has horror stories about.
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    "Most developers are just normal people makin' stuff because their company pays them to." And normal people do have feelings. So they like or love the things they do, or despise or even hate them. Unless they became mindles zombies along the way.. which happens, but much more common is rather that they project all the other negative feelings into technology X or Y ... at least it often seems like this, when I read another rant about the technology Z.
- tuesdayrain 8y ago
  I can't imagine hating Facebook as a developer. Just because some people hand over their personal information to them? I'll gladly overlook that when they gave me things like React, React Native. GraphQL, Jest, Flow.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    You can't imagine that some people find a few fad frameworks not appealing enough to overlook hijacking the world's social relationships?
- pjmlp 8y ago
  What developers?! I really dislike this HN generalization that software developers are a big mass of people that think all the same way, which most of the time is actually a synomim for a thin subgroup of developers doing web applications with CLI tooling on UNIX like OSes. There are many kinds of developers out there, some of us have experienced multiple kinds of platforms and development models towards the years, to make our business decisions how to provide our work according to points of view and related cost/benefit.
tangue 8y ago
While I understand this point, there are other things than the technical aspects, the Diaspora precedent is a cautious tale of why not to chose this approach : It will attract the most toxic people of our communities.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  The popular communities (Twitter. Reddit, Youtube, email spam) are already toxic. The solution to that is good UX this puts users in control of which content is put in their face.
  - awakeasleep 8y ago
    I'd suggest a bit of reflection on this comment. There is a bubble or perspective that derides everything popular as toxic, but I encourage you to think in degrees, and compare things. For example, visit voat.co, and then 4chan, and then compare them to the sites you listed. And hell! compare them to your family discussions, and what you see on fox/cnn/msnbc. I bet you can find a spectrum of toxic content, and I bet the sites you listed aren't at the extreme toxic end.
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      I agree that some places are worse, but I don't see value in accepting a more diluted poison. Bad apples spoil the bunch. In fact Reddit's I'll may be worse because the non toxic content is attractive enough that it draws users in only to be chronically sideswiped by the toxic content, while voat can be simply if ignored.
dgzl 8y ago
The best comment I've read all day.
comboy 8y ago
> it needs to be a platform that people want to develop for Have you tried developing an app for it? Docs are solid, but time is valuable. Why don't they include a bunch of super simple apps to show how it all works and make entry as easy as possible? I want solid to succeed (well, anything comparable is also ok), but as much as I don't like it, marketing wins over how good the product is. That's just how it is today. That's how open source libraries and projects grow. It has to do with tons of available information, world moving forward very fast and our limited attention.

by zsck 8y ago

egonschiele 8y ago

> the platform that developers want to support is the one that wins. This is very hard to believe. Developers hate apple, facebook, and countless other platforms that are doing very well. Adoption is the fundamental problem, not what developers want to support. The platform with the most users is what people will develop for.

true_religion 8y ago
I think you may be in a bubble. Many developers like apple, and facebook enough to work for them. In fact, its that which keeps both platforms viable in the face of stiff competiton and shallow moats.
- skosch 8y ago
  You're talking past each other: contributing to the App Store isn't the same as working for Apple.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  Facebook has a shallow moat? People only use it at all because of the network effect. And Apple's main draw is the large number of affluent customers. They'll have developers as long as they have those users, whether the developers like it or not. Which is why they can get away with charging 30% to developers when platforms have historically given incentives to developers to develop for their platform.
  - true_religion 8y ago
    That is a bit circular to say developers like Apple because they like money, thus Apple is not truly liked for itself. Apple was successful in building a platform because it's in house developers were capable of putting together something that was popolar with many people. They built on that to make more money by allowing other developers to use their platform. However two things come to mind: 1. Competency is not a moat. If Apple loses developers it's next product will not be so much better than competition that it's success will maintain against erosion. 2. For all people talk about associating with necessary evils; when you associate with someone long enough, you begin to think they are not evil. Thus it seems reasonable to think developers do not hate Apple, if they work with Apple.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      > That is a bit circular to say developers like Apple because they like money, thus Apple is not truly liked for itself. It's almost as if users patronize Comcast because they like internet access and Comcast is not truly liked for itself. It's almost as if drivers patronize the DMV because they like driving without being arrested and the DMV is not truly liked for itself. There is a big difference between needing something and liking it. > Apple was successful in building a platform because it's in house developers were capable of putting together something that was popolar with many people. They built on that to make more money by allowing other developers to use their platform. But who are they to be allowing anything? GE makes a fine electrical distribution panel but that doesn't mean they get to decide what kind of lamp or microwave or laptop I can use with it. > 1. Competency is not a moat. If Apple loses developers it's next product will not be so much better than competition that it's success will maintain against erosion. Network effects are a moat. Apple had the first mover advantage, so they had the initial users and the developers follow the users. Then the users stay because the developers are there and the developers have no choice but to stay if they want access to those users. The users could switch to Android -- most of them already have. But the developers can't make the remaining users move outside of some sufficiently large organized boycott, which are notoriously difficult to effectuate because of the coordination problem. > 2. For all people talk about associating with necessary evils; when you associate with someone long enough, you begin to think they are not evil. Thus it seems reasonable to think developers do not hate Apple, if they work with Apple. By this logic the most beloved entity in the country should be the IRS. And if people had to file four times a year instead of once they would like them even more.
photik 8y ago
Apples and Oranges. Your analysis is after the fact, and those arenas aren't open development environments. Adoption follows content creation. Not every time, but the essence of the sentiment 'build it and they will come,' shouldn't be dismissed.
PaulHoule 8y ago
If developers hate Apple then why do they buy macs?
- symfoniq 8y ago
  I’m seeing less and less developers buy Macs...
  - andrewmutz 8y ago
    In favor of linux? Chrome books?
    - pmlnr 8y ago
      Developers are moving away from Apple hardware, that is quite visible. The operating system is a much better question, that is hard to answer - given the fact that linux runs on anything, Window runs on a lot of things, and Hackintosh exists.
    - PaulHoule 8y ago
      Windows. One reason the world is so screwed up in 2018 is that people think they have to get everything for free. Thus "your smartphone" is really an extension of other people's brands. It's not a tool to control your environment but a way sinister forces in the environment control you. I like Linux for certain things but since you don't pay for it you influenced by the priorities of those who do pay: IBM, Google, the corporate customers of Red Hat. Since you do pay for Windows and you do have a choice, Microsoft is working for you and there is an incentive to make the OS better.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Only those using Macs as pretty UNIX. There are other kinds of developers.
- twelve40 8y ago
  Why would you ask such a weird question? Is Apple an all-encompassing, lifetime sect? all or nothing? I like developing on my MacBook but I hope to God I will never have to write a line of code for the walled garden iOS, though I may not even get a choice at some point. Sometimes Apple makes very nice and useful things, sometimes some things they make are really shitty, other large parts of what they do I hate very much, like their monopolistic control freak tendencies.
Aunche 8y ago
Developers love Apple. They don't have to worry whether their apps will work on a million different Android devices.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  There's more than one developer out there. Developers do hate Apple. Other developers may love it.
- flukus 8y ago
  Some developers love them, but as a developer myself the idea that I need apples permissions to run my own apps on my own machine makes my skin crawl. If early computing was a walled garden environment like iOS I never would have been a developer.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Early computing was a kind of walled garden. Each computer system was its own eco-system with special hardware features. The PC was the exception to it, only because IBM wasn't too clever about securing the platform like everyone else.
andreygrehov 8y ago
I honestly don't believe that developers hate Apple/Facebook.
dboreham 8y ago
I remember when Facebook was very developer-friendly (2006-ish). Significantly different experience at the time developing applications for FB vs Myspace and the lesser social networking platforms of the age.
zsck 8y ago
This is pretty clearly not the case. Apple and Facebook are companies, not platforms. The platforms these companies develop are wildly successful and loved by developers. I think you may be too focused on how developers decide a platform that is already successful. In that case, yes, which one is already adopted the most deserves strong consideration. However, when it comes to actually achieving adoption, it’s the platform that developers flock to that tend to succeed, all else being equal. We are talking about relatively fresh terrain here. There isn’t already a huge federated system like this that has a lot of mainstream adoption.
- johncolanduoni 8y ago
  > However, when it comes to actually achieving adoption, it’s the platform that developers flock to that tend to succeed, all else being equal. Perhaps, but I struggle to think of two comparable platforms with similar user adoption and significantly different developer interest, outside of there being different sets of developers that hate/love each (c.f. iOS and Android). I'm definitely not aware of any examples indicating a platform can be saved or damned by developers loving/hating it: e.g. most developers hated developing for the PS3 initially but it didn't fare badly in the console wars. Xbox One however did do much worse than the PS4 because fewer users wanted it.
  - lelandbatey 8y ago
    Arguably, Linux owning the back end development space so completely is due to developer preference. But I think you do have a point. It's not just developer preference, there are other big factors like feature offered and ease of entry that determine likelihood of success.
    - baq 8y ago
      > Arguably, Linux owning the back end development space so completely is due to developer preference. and why is that possible? it's because the backend is decoupled from where the users are.
drb91 8y ago
I’m not sure I follow developers hating Apple when 99% of the engineers I see use an apple laptop. As to facebook, we’ll see if it survives. There’s not much to use it for aside from advertising as a platform, and I’ve heard nothing but negatives about return on ads.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Plenty of people hate things they are stuck with for lack of usable alternatives
  - drb91 8y ago
    Maybe. I just don’t see a shred of evidence developers generally hate Apple.
eksemplar 8y ago
Most developers I know use MacBooks, my own staff included. Most JS developers quite like stuff like react, and most api developers like graphQL. So while developers may dislike Facebook as a company, they don’t seem to dislike Facebook tools. I don’t think the platform that developers like will necessarily take of though.
- feanaro 8y ago
  > Most developers I know use MacBooks, my own staff included I'm just letting you know that we both apparently have very biased samples on this matter.
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    Yes, people are different. :) When I was 20 years younger most developers I knew loved Linux. So maybe she plays in. I know I left gentoo for a Mac in 2006 and I’ve never looked back. I don’t dislike Linux by the way, I just don’t want to spend time configuring things anymore.
    - spiritcat 8y ago
      perhaps gentoo was not a good fit for you? currently develop on mac but still linux at home
      - eksemplar 8y ago
        Gentoo was certainly a terrible fit, but I've had my runs with Debian, ubuntu and fedora as well, and it somehow always ends up being configuration hell, which then breaks with some random update, prompting me to do it all over. These days it's more than that though. I mean, I'm completely drenched in the apple eco-system, and it's kind of nice to get iMessages on my MacBook and sharing data between devices so easily. I now I could setup something similar with stuff like own cloud, but then I'd have to do that, instead of it just working out the box. Like I said, I don't dislike linux. I've never really disliked an OS until windows 10, but I just don't bother with technology that isn't designed for user experience anymore. Like my first smartphone was an android, I don't think I'll ever own an android phone again. :p
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"Developers hate apple, facebook, and countless other platforms that are doing very well. " No, most developers don't hate anything. Most developers are just normal people makin' stuff because their company pays them to. Most developers are not particularly ideological. Just some of us are ... perhaps a little bit more than in other industries.
- voidifremoved 8y ago
  It isn't about ideology it is about ease and quality. Facebook is legendary for introducing breaking changes to their API without warning, for having terrible documentation, baroque and inconsistent APIs, flaky behaviour and broken examples. Whatever you think of Facebook the company, Facebook the API is something everyone I know has horror stories about.
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  "Most developers are just normal people makin' stuff because their company pays them to." And normal people do have feelings. So they like or love the things they do, or despise or even hate them. Unless they became mindles zombies along the way.. which happens, but much more common is rather that they project all the other negative feelings into technology X or Y ... at least it often seems like this, when I read another rant about the technology Z.
tuesdayrain 8y ago
I can't imagine hating Facebook as a developer. Just because some people hand over their personal information to them? I'll gladly overlook that when they gave me things like React, React Native. GraphQL, Jest, Flow.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  You can't imagine that some people find a few fad frameworks not appealing enough to overlook hijacking the world's social relationships?
pjmlp 8y ago
What developers?! I really dislike this HN generalization that software developers are a big mass of people that think all the same way, which most of the time is actually a synomim for a thin subgroup of developers doing web applications with CLI tooling on UNIX like OSes. There are many kinds of developers out there, some of us have experienced multiple kinds of platforms and development models towards the years, to make our business decisions how to provide our work according to points of view and related cost/benefit.

tangue 8y ago

While I understand this point, there are other things than the technical aspects, the Diaspora precedent is a cautious tale of why not to chose this approach : It will attract the most toxic people of our communities.

fjsolwmv 8y ago
The popular communities (Twitter. Reddit, Youtube, email spam) are already toxic. The solution to that is good UX this puts users in control of which content is put in their face.
- awakeasleep 8y ago
  I'd suggest a bit of reflection on this comment. There is a bubble or perspective that derides everything popular as toxic, but I encourage you to think in degrees, and compare things. For example, visit voat.co, and then 4chan, and then compare them to the sites you listed. And hell! compare them to your family discussions, and what you see on fox/cnn/msnbc. I bet you can find a spectrum of toxic content, and I bet the sites you listed aren't at the extreme toxic end.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    I agree that some places are worse, but I don't see value in accepting a more diluted poison. Bad apples spoil the bunch. In fact Reddit's I'll may be worse because the non toxic content is attractive enough that it draws users in only to be chronically sideswiped by the toxic content, while voat can be simply if ignored.

dgzl 8y ago

The best comment I've read all day.

comboy 8y ago

> it needs to be a platform that people want to develop for Have you tried developing an app for it? Docs are solid, but time is valuable. Why don't they include a bunch of super simple apps to show how it all works and make entry as easy as possible? I want solid to succeed (well, anything comparable is also ok), but as much as I don't like it, marketing wins over how good the product is. That's just how it is today. That's how open source libraries and projects grow. It has to do with tons of available information, world moving forward very fast and our limited attention.