5 ms·

Well, you obviously have more insight in to the early days of digg than I do, but you're basically proving his point. You say you had significant equity but wr

by nck4222 16y ago

Well, you obviously have more insight in to the early days of digg than I do, but you're basically proving his point. You say you had significant equity but wrote bad code. That's not a very good formula.

gommm 16y ago
Some of the best programmers I've worked with will say that the code they wrote a few years ago is bad code... I don't think it's a sign that ojbyrne is a bad developer or that he actually wrote bad code, on the contrary the worse developers are often the ones who are convinced that they are good. See the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
- ojbyrne 16y ago
  Thanks. Now that you mention it, digg spy circa 2005 was a thing of beauty. Concept by Kevin, Design by Daniel Burka, making it all work by me.
ojbyrne 16y ago
Everyone makes mistakes in the early days of startups and digg was no exception. If you're here, you've probably heard that Ycombinator favors determination over talent. I kept the site up and made things work with extremely limited resources.
- bvi 16y ago
  I'm not sure if you've done so already, but an AMA on reddit would be really neat if you're interested in talking about the early digg days.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    >an AMA on reddit would be really neat Sadly I can't see this going well. Reddit generally makes a big joke of how much Digg [supposedly] sucks. I don't think it would be generally a fulfilling experience for the AMA subject or most onlookers. YMMV.
- philovivero 16y ago
  I'll second this. Owen's code was bad, because it was a large hack. It was a hack that worked. It was a hack because he had limited resources. He was ONE GUY coding, administering, doing everything up until something like 8 million users. That's not easy. The code was bad. So fucking what. It worked. So with that, I say Owen is a good coder. Kevin never understood tech. As Owen says, he's just a guy who looks good on TV. Now he's throwing all his good coders under the bus because he fucked Digg up with his grand V4 vision, and he's trying to point the blame at others besides himself. "It's a low move, Kevin. Low move. We supported you. We took the blame when we fucked up. We never pointed the finger at you. So take the blame when you fuck up. Asshole." Sincerely, The guy who kept DBs running for Digg for 4 years.
jshen 16y ago
I disagree. Every programmer I know thinks the code they wrote 5 years ago is bad because they've learned a lot in the years since writing it. The site worked and and worked well, even if the underlying code wasn't as elegant as it could have been. So many sites go through this pain, just look at twitter with their rewrites of job queues and what not.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  Agreed. Look at reddit's current codebase. It's such a mess that the OSS platform is all but worthless. [1] Nevertheless, it's handled the incredible demands placed upon it with something approximating success. When your team is too strapped for time to refactor the code that's causing problems, and instead builds hacks upon hacks in an effort to keep the site up, it's a testament to their ingenuity if it's still running years later with millions more customers. [1] http://www.deserettechnology.com/journal/reddit-the-open-source-software http://www.deserettechnology.com/journal/reddit-the-open-sou...
  - jshen 16y ago
    Reddit is a weird example. Making a code base a platform requires time and effort to be spent on ... Well making it ready to be a platform. There are a lot of things you don't need to do if your code is limited to your team and it's internal processes. There is a diagram explaining this in the mythical man month, but I don't have my copy handy to give a reference.
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      Except that reddit's in the odd position of having released their codebase as a platform, without having been able to put the requisite time into making it suitable as such. I watched a documentary a few weeks ago (damned if I can remember what it's called) about Netscape's transition to Mozilla. The amount of effort that went into that transition was staggering. For his part, Jedberg said [1] that preparing and maintaing redditOSS will likely be one of the first projects for their new hires, as it will make development and maintenance on their current codebase that much easier. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2345247 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2345247
ayers 16y ago
I think that statement is upon reflection. Everyone looks back at previous code and thinks they could have written it better. That is just the progression of a developer.

by nck4222 16y ago

gommm 16y ago

Some of the best programmers I've worked with will say that the code they wrote a few years ago is bad code... I don't think it's a sign that ojbyrne is a bad developer or that he actually wrote bad code, on the contrary the worse developers are often the ones who are convinced that they are good. See the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

ojbyrne 16y ago
Thanks. Now that you mention it, digg spy circa 2005 was a thing of beauty. Concept by Kevin, Design by Daniel Burka, making it all work by me.

ojbyrne 16y ago

Everyone makes mistakes in the early days of startups and digg was no exception. If you're here, you've probably heard that Ycombinator favors determination over talent. I kept the site up and made things work with extremely limited resources.

bvi 16y ago
I'm not sure if you've done so already, but an AMA on reddit would be really neat if you're interested in talking about the early digg days.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >an AMA on reddit would be really neat Sadly I can't see this going well. Reddit generally makes a big joke of how much Digg [supposedly] sucks. I don't think it would be generally a fulfilling experience for the AMA subject or most onlookers. YMMV.
philovivero 16y ago
I'll second this. Owen's code was bad, because it was a large hack. It was a hack that worked. It was a hack because he had limited resources. He was ONE GUY coding, administering, doing everything up until something like 8 million users. That's not easy. The code was bad. So fucking what. It worked. So with that, I say Owen is a good coder. Kevin never understood tech. As Owen says, he's just a guy who looks good on TV. Now he's throwing all his good coders under the bus because he fucked Digg up with his grand V4 vision, and he's trying to point the blame at others besides himself. "It's a low move, Kevin. Low move. We supported you. We took the blame when we fucked up. We never pointed the finger at you. So take the blame when you fuck up. Asshole." Sincerely, The guy who kept DBs running for Digg for 4 years.

jshen 16y ago

I disagree. Every programmer I know thinks the code they wrote 5 years ago is bad because they've learned a lot in the years since writing it. The site worked and and worked well, even if the underlying code wasn't as elegant as it could have been. So many sites go through this pain, just look at twitter with their rewrites of job queues and what not.

redthrowaway 16y ago
Agreed. Look at reddit's current codebase. It's such a mess that the OSS platform is all but worthless. [1] Nevertheless, it's handled the incredible demands placed upon it with something approximating success. When your team is too strapped for time to refactor the code that's causing problems, and instead builds hacks upon hacks in an effort to keep the site up, it's a testament to their ingenuity if it's still running years later with millions more customers. [1] http://www.deserettechnology.com/journal/reddit-the-open-source-software http://www.deserettechnology.com/journal/reddit-the-open-sou...
- jshen 16y ago
  Reddit is a weird example. Making a code base a platform requires time and effort to be spent on ... Well making it ready to be a platform. There are a lot of things you don't need to do if your code is limited to your team and it's internal processes. There is a diagram explaining this in the mythical man month, but I don't have my copy handy to give a reference.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    Except that reddit's in the odd position of having released their codebase as a platform, without having been able to put the requisite time into making it suitable as such. I watched a documentary a few weeks ago (damned if I can remember what it's called) about Netscape's transition to Mozilla. The amount of effort that went into that transition was staggering. For his part, Jedberg said [1] that preparing and maintaing redditOSS will likely be one of the first projects for their new hires, as it will make development and maintenance on their current codebase that much easier. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2345247 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2345247

ayers 16y ago

I think that statement is upon reflection. Everyone looks back at previous code and thinks they could have written it better. That is just the progression of a developer.