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> Technically speaking, they were quite far ahead of the curve. While VMs were all the rage, they were shipping container-based products > The technical abilit

> Technically speaking, they were quite far ahead of the curve. While VMs were all the rage, they were shipping container-based products > The technical abilities of the Joyent folks were well beyond just about anybody else for a long time. None of that was ever true. Whether they had container-based or VM-based tech was a tiny unimportant detail for a cloud company. Although over engineering in this area certainly made it impossible for them to compete with more traditional hosting companies. And to be able to compete with Amazon they needed something they didn't have - distributed systems background, not Sun background, which was anything but.

SwellJoe 7y ago
"And to be able to compete with Amazon they needed something they didn't have - distributed systems background, not Sun background, which was anything but." lol. "The network is the computer."
kelp 7y ago
I'm reminded of something a smart engineer said at work today. "Our customers don't care how we implement the system, they just care that it works"
- insulanian 7y ago
  That's how you end up with unmaintainable solutions and code-bases which die under the cost of just trying to keep the system running, and because they lose the ability to evolve.
  - kelp 7y ago
    I guess I should have provided more context. It was in context of talking about a rewrite into another language to make something more maintainable and performant. To explain how hard that was to get right, and that if we messed it up, customers only really care that we messed it up.
Annatar 7y ago
Sun Microsystems literally invented the network is the computer. They were the first company ever to even begin to think in terms of distributed systems on a network scale (DEC had done some pioneering work on the hardware front prior to that with VMS, but not the network). The network file system, NFS, exists because Sun Microsystems engineers willed it so -- they wanted to multiply the computational power of smaller systems into a larger, distributed one. They were a pioneer in distributed systems computing. Not many computer companies can claim that. Even fewer companies can claim engineers which hold patents which now power the InterNet, like Radia Perlman does for the spanning tree routing protocol. If that's not distributed, I don't know what is.
- notacoward 7y ago
  Wow, they invented the slogan. Sun alumni seem awfully thin-skinned about not getting credit for every little thing they did, which is why it's pretty unforgivable to deny DEC credit for anything more than "some work on hardware". I was working on DECnet-based remote file access software in 1989. It wasn't new, but NFSv2 was. DEC already had real clusters doing real work before Sun did. Within the company there was already a globe-spanning LAT network. I had friends at Apollo who were also way ahead of Sun wrt distributed computing. AT&T's RFS was at least contemporary with NFS, as were Netware and Vines. Sun was definitely a player in that space and made some seminal contributions, but to say they were the first even to think about it is unmitigated BS.
  - Annatar 7y ago
    I am not a Sun Microsystems alumni. I wish I was, just as I equally wish I were an SGI alumni. Yes DEC did have clusters, and I remember booting my Alpha workstations from a Sun SPARCStation 20 over DECNet as an AutoClient and I know DEC had hardware clustering and VMS working together as a distributed system, but since I came at the end of that era and only worked with Ultrix and DECUnix, I don't know any more about it which is why I couldn't go into detail. I only go into detail when I know about something and usually I've done that something myself.
- zzzcpan 7y ago

SwellJoe 7y ago

"And to be able to compete with Amazon they needed something they didn't have - distributed systems background, not Sun background, which was anything but." lol. "The network is the computer."

kelp 7y ago

I'm reminded of something a smart engineer said at work today. "Our customers don't care how we implement the system, they just care that it works"

insulanian 7y ago
That's how you end up with unmaintainable solutions and code-bases which die under the cost of just trying to keep the system running, and because they lose the ability to evolve.
- kelp 7y ago
  I guess I should have provided more context. It was in context of talking about a rewrite into another language to make something more maintainable and performant. To explain how hard that was to get right, and that if we messed it up, customers only really care that we messed it up.

Annatar 7y ago

Sun Microsystems literally invented the network is the computer. They were the first company ever to even begin to think in terms of distributed systems on a network scale (DEC had done some pioneering work on the hardware front prior to that with VMS, but not the network). The network file system, NFS, exists because Sun Microsystems engineers willed it so -- they wanted to multiply the computational power of smaller systems into a larger, distributed one. They were a pioneer in distributed systems computing. Not many computer companies can claim that. Even fewer companies can claim engineers which hold patents which now power the InterNet, like Radia Perlman does for the spanning tree routing protocol. If that's not distributed, I don't know what is.

notacoward 7y ago
Wow, they invented the slogan. Sun alumni seem awfully thin-skinned about not getting credit for every little thing they did, which is why it's pretty unforgivable to deny DEC credit for anything more than "some work on hardware". I was working on DECnet-based remote file access software in 1989. It wasn't new, but NFSv2 was. DEC already had real clusters doing real work before Sun did. Within the company there was already a globe-spanning LAT network. I had friends at Apollo who were also way ahead of Sun wrt distributed computing. AT&T's RFS was at least contemporary with NFS, as were Netware and Vines. Sun was definitely a player in that space and made some seminal contributions, but to say they were the first even to think about it is unmitigated BS.
- Annatar 7y ago
  I am not a Sun Microsystems alumni. I wish I was, just as I equally wish I were an SGI alumni. Yes DEC did have clusters, and I remember booting my Alpha workstations from a Sun SPARCStation 20 over DECNet as an AutoClient and I know DEC had hardware clustering and VMS working together as a distributed system, but since I came at the end of that era and only worked with Ultrix and DECUnix, I don't know any more about it which is why I couldn't go into detail. I only go into detail when I know about something and usually I've done that something myself.
zzzcpan 7y ago