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To offer a slightly alternative perpective on this, I actually think this type of "article"/("listicle"/"tweetacle"?) can have negative effects. In my mind, it

To offer a slightly alternative perpective on this, I actually think this type of "article"/("listicle"/"tweetacle"?) can have negative effects. In my mind, it lends credence to the very toxic notion of "value of ideas" over "value of execution". The former is something that has all sorts of knock-on effects: backward IP laws "protecting" ideas, perverse incentives within large corporations with outspoken "idea men" being promoted ahead of doers, non-technical founders with "high-potential ideas" sucking up investment and expecting to execute with technical hires on untested theories. I'm not saying any of the above applies in this case of course, but the fact is that it is you who built Redis, not pg, nor many others who've had similar ideas, and I think writing the above tweet thread lends undue weight to many of above negative trends in our industry (and also in general in recorded history of IP/invention-credit battles).

antirez 8y ago
It's a matter of interpretation. IMHO the tweet shows how valuable Hacker News itself is, not Paul Graham ideas (but then HN was created by PG, so, yep, also gives credits). If you take a number of people that are good at doing things and put them together, this will result in more things created because of a natural process of ideas exchanges / triggering. I'm a example of a very isolated programmer, so this applies especially to folks in my condition, but at this point I guess there are quite a bit of "us".
dragonwriter 8y ago
> In my mind, it lends credence to the very toxic notion of "value of ideas" over "value of execution". Ideas are required for execution; they don't have independent value (idea without execution delivers nothing), but neither does execution (you have tohave something to execute.)
- lucideer 8y ago
  Of course. I didn't say otherwise: what I'm talking about is value. Ideas are often (usually?) assigned greater value than execution itself, which is absurd. In actual fact, even beyond "inception", most execution requires ongoing iteration and innovation. No final product is solely the result of its inspiration.
  - qaq 8y ago
    We might have biased opinion on the subject at least those of us heavily involved on execution side. Execution is much more subject to available resources.
philwelch 8y ago
“Look at how awesome I am for inventing Redis” wouldn’t have been as interesting, though. Ideas are cheap and plentiful if you have the eye for them, and learning the sources of inspiration other makers had can be informative if you also want to make things.
- hinkley 8y ago
  In fact your main problem is descoping a large number of ideas to get to a small, coherent set.
sudhirj 8y ago
Irrespective of what the perception of pg is, the tweet was pretty clear that pg only "inspired" or "triggered" the creation of Redis. That gives pg no more more credibility than the moon gets for inspiring Van Gogh to paint Starry Night. Attributing inspiration takes nothing away from an artist, nor from the work. I don't event think it meaningfully changes the credibility of the inspiring object. I could randomly paraphrase and quote lines from the Art of Computer Programming, for instance, and if I had a wide enough audience I'd probably bring about a Great Renaissance in the field of computer science and programming. History might remember as the Greatest Idea Man of all time, but that seems unlikely.
sitkack 8y ago
> In my mind, it lends credence to the very toxic notion of "value of ideas" over "value of execution". On the spectrum on sh#t hn believes, this one, along with meritocracy has got to go. No one is arguing that ideas have _more_ value than execution. But ideas clearly have value, we entire buildings devoted to them. The internet was built to transport them. Getting exposure to them is deemed critical for the development of our young and the future of the humanity.
- lucideer 8y ago
  You might have some points here (I certainly agree about meritocracy), but the examples are pretty bizarre. How does building devotion prove inherent value? The internet was built to transport information: knowledge, education, documentation, history, insight. "Ideas" are none of these things: ideas are inspirational and transient in nature. (Sure, the internet's communication protocols do transmit "ideas" in numerous ways: mainly in terms of shared experience and evolving iterative conclusions from shared knowledge, but it's hardly the intent of its creation). Getting exposure to past knowledge and experience is critical to our young, and the future of humanity, but—frankly—the glorified fantasy surrounding some popular histories does more to further the idea of the privileged "celebrated few" with the genius of inspiration, than to instill any sense of the true study, investigation, work put in by those who have achieved great things in the past. (think even old storiea like Archimedes' bath or Edison's bulb or Newton's apple or whichever more modern example— placing individuals on sort of divine pedestals to be blessed with such ideas). You're calling out meritocracy, but it's exactly this kind of championing of ideas that leads to it. Salvatore has put the long, quiet, sometimes relatively thankless hours into making this a reality, and it could seem to some that pg is being put on a pedestal for being momentarily inspirational: is that not the very thing you're calling out?
  - sitkack 8y ago
    No pedestals. > pg is being put on a pedestal being momentarily inspirational I am certainly not doing that. I don't think what happened wrt pg and antirez even qualifies as an idea or inspiration. Chain of events? Catalyst? Memcached was already being used like a data structure server before Redis came along. Redis did put deep thought into the design which is why it works so well for so many applications. Ideas in and of themselves have value and are needed. Really good ones take a long time to create and hone. Edison's bulb is a great example of brute force. Newton's Apple always seemed like a creation myth. History goes a lot deeper than pull quotes.

antirez 8y ago

It's a matter of interpretation. IMHO the tweet shows how valuable Hacker News itself is, not Paul Graham ideas (but then HN was created by PG, so, yep, also gives credits). If you take a number of people that are good at doing things and put them together, this will result in more things created because of a natural process of ideas exchanges / triggering. I'm a example of a very isolated programmer, so this applies especially to folks in my condition, but at this point I guess there are quite a bit of "us".

dragonwriter 8y ago

> In my mind, it lends credence to the very toxic notion of "value of ideas" over "value of execution". Ideas are required for execution; they don't have independent value (idea without execution delivers nothing), but neither does execution (you have tohave something to execute.)

lucideer 8y ago
Of course. I didn't say otherwise: what I'm talking about is value. Ideas are often (usually?) assigned greater value than execution itself, which is absurd. In actual fact, even beyond "inception", most execution requires ongoing iteration and innovation. No final product is solely the result of its inspiration.
- qaq 8y ago
  We might have biased opinion on the subject at least those of us heavily involved on execution side. Execution is much more subject to available resources.

philwelch 8y ago

“Look at how awesome I am for inventing Redis” wouldn’t have been as interesting, though. Ideas are cheap and plentiful if you have the eye for them, and learning the sources of inspiration other makers had can be informative if you also want to make things.

hinkley 8y ago
In fact your main problem is descoping a large number of ideas to get to a small, coherent set.

sudhirj 8y ago

Irrespective of what the perception of pg is, the tweet was pretty clear that pg only "inspired" or "triggered" the creation of Redis. That gives pg no more more credibility than the moon gets for inspiring Van Gogh to paint Starry Night. Attributing inspiration takes nothing away from an artist, nor from the work. I don't event think it meaningfully changes the credibility of the inspiring object. I could randomly paraphrase and quote lines from the Art of Computer Programming, for instance, and if I had a wide enough audience I'd probably bring about a Great Renaissance in the field of computer science and programming. History might remember as the Greatest Idea Man of all time, but that seems unlikely.

sitkack 8y ago

> In my mind, it lends credence to the very toxic notion of "value of ideas" over "value of execution". On the spectrum on sh#t hn believes, this one, along with meritocracy has got to go. No one is arguing that ideas have _more_ value than execution. But ideas clearly have value, we entire buildings devoted to them. The internet was built to transport them. Getting exposure to them is deemed critical for the development of our young and the future of the humanity.

lucideer 8y ago
You might have some points here (I certainly agree about meritocracy), but the examples are pretty bizarre. How does building devotion prove inherent value? The internet was built to transport information: knowledge, education, documentation, history, insight. "Ideas" are none of these things: ideas are inspirational and transient in nature. (Sure, the internet's communication protocols do transmit "ideas" in numerous ways: mainly in terms of shared experience and evolving iterative conclusions from shared knowledge, but it's hardly the intent of its creation). Getting exposure to past knowledge and experience is critical to our young, and the future of humanity, but—frankly—the glorified fantasy surrounding some popular histories does more to further the idea of the privileged "celebrated few" with the genius of inspiration, than to instill any sense of the true study, investigation, work put in by those who have achieved great things in the past. (think even old storiea like Archimedes' bath or Edison's bulb or Newton's apple or whichever more modern example— placing individuals on sort of divine pedestals to be blessed with such ideas). You're calling out meritocracy, but it's exactly this kind of championing of ideas that leads to it. Salvatore has put the long, quiet, sometimes relatively thankless hours into making this a reality, and it could seem to some that pg is being put on a pedestal for being momentarily inspirational: is that not the very thing you're calling out?
- sitkack 8y ago
  No pedestals. > pg is being put on a pedestal being momentarily inspirational I am certainly not doing that. I don't think what happened wrt pg and antirez even qualifies as an idea or inspiration. Chain of events? Catalyst? Memcached was already being used like a data structure server before Redis came along. Redis did put deep thought into the design which is why it works so well for so many applications. Ideas in and of themselves have value and are needed. Really good ones take a long time to create and hone. Edison's bulb is a great example of brute force. Newton's Apple always seemed like a creation myth. History goes a lot deeper than pull quotes.