9 ms·

Author here, happy to answer any questions about how we build products at Dropbox.

mingw__ 6y ago
Would love to hear more about API-QL. It doesn't sound like this is something available for public use yet. Is there any plan to open source this?
- mattgerstman 6y ago
  API-QL is essentially a glue layer to make our internal interface, Stone, play nicely with Apollo. We might open source some pieces of it, but the vast majority of it is code generation for very specific Dropbox use cases. https://github.com/dropbox/stone https://github.com/dropbox/stone
gustavomd 6y ago
Very well written and amazing job. I really trust Dropbox engineering teams. My only wish would be the return of the simple desktop app for those of us that just need ultra reliable synced folders (I use macOS). The app today is bloated and upon boot takes 600MB of RAM. Would you guys ever consider a streamlined version of the app for desktop?
- mattgerstman 6y ago
  This is definitely something we're talking about. We're aware there are a set of users who want just sync and we're figuring out how to ship that while making our other features discoverable.
  - infogulch 6y ago
    HN is a tough crowd to sell everyman software to. Compared to your moderately tech literate person off the street, many here fiercely stand their ground on the computing solutions that they choose. Maybe this is a consequence of knowing how the sausage is made. I admire your goal to try to deliver value to both groups. I think this strategy is broadly underappreciated, and I expect it improves the product faster than focusing on either group exclusively.
    - mattgerstman 6y ago
      Thanks so much. We love to share how we build things with the tech community and we know the tradeoffs when we post them. We're just a bunch of people doing our best to do right by our users.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > This is definitely something we're talking about. We're aware there are a set of users who want just sync and we're figuring out how to ship that while making our other features discoverable. Excellent. I would go a bit further. I not only just want sync, but I'm willing to (mostly) give up the hosted mirroring in order to get unlimited user friendly device-device file synchronization[0]. On top of that, there are plenty of scenarios (largely around collaboration and/or mobile) where I would like to selectively opt-in to cloud mirroring, for which I'd be quite happy to pay a modest amount. So this folder of personal documents and ebooks[1] synced across these devices (potentially including another user's, if/when they are on the same local network) but no mirroring in the cloud, and that folder of photos synced only between my laptop and my phone, including cloud storage backup and mirroring ($). [0] Yes, I'm aware that there are plenty of solutions, starting with rsync etc., that I could cobble together, but most of them aren't particularly user-friendly. [1] BTW, have you thought of selling a Dropbox-centric e-reader?
    - solarkraft 6y ago
      Regarding [0]: Are you aware of Syncthing? It's p2p, allows you to select folders and exactly which devices they are shared with. I have personally had issues with it, but it seems like I'm the only one. The feature set seems to perfectly check out.
      - webmaven 6y ago
        I was aware of Syncthing, but last I checked there were some caveats that made it unsuitable. Looking again now, it seems those have been largely addressed, although if I want a hosted mirror I'll still have to set one up myself, and it looks like each shared folder has to be set up and authenticated on each device (ie. there seems to be no notion of a "user" who chooses which of their devices have a copy). I appreciate the nudge to look at it again, and at the very least this will stop me from having to pay attention to Dropbox's enforced case-insensitivity.
  - T-hawk 6y ago
    Please add my voice to that. I just want sync. Not a fat client constantly blaring about features for sharing and comments and teams, while not actually syncing my files thanks to "Smart Sync". My current Dropbox subscription term ends in February. At that time I currently plan to leave Dropbox in favor of a service that just does sync and no other garbage.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  > The app today is bloated and upon boot takes 600MB of RAM Is that a joke or a bug?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
abathur 6y ago
I don't have time to absorb all of this right now, but I do still want to thank you for creating it. :) I consider what I see as process/project blogging to be one of the Internet's unsung heroes, but a lot of it has a narrow focus. As someone who hasn't worked on a project with this many hands involved (outside of OSS, at least), it's nice to get a peek behind that curtain. Looking forward to giving it a more careful read.
- mattgerstman 6y ago
  Thanks so much! I had the realization recently that we don't talk a lot about what engineers do outside of writing code and the Plus launch was the perfect narrative to talk about it.
gee_totes 6y ago
Definitely appreciated the tips at the bottom of the article. Did you use anything like Storybook to share the component library?
- mattgerstman 6y ago
  We do use storybook! We have an internal design system called DIG that may eventually be shared more publicly. Each individual feature gets a "product component library" which is a way to rapidly build components on top of DIG.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > We have an internal design system called DIG that may eventually be shared more publicly. DIG == Dropbox Interface Guide(lines)?
butz 6y ago
Will Dropbox client for Linux get some attention? It would be great if .dropbox directories adhered to XDG directory specs.
- mattgerstman 6y ago
  FWIW I've passed this note along to our sync team but I don't have a ton of insight here.
s9w 6y ago
Go scream at your boss. Dropbox has jumped the shark. Why am I getting red warning signs on my dropbox tray to advertise new features? I'm paying a shitton of money and using less than 1%. Take the money and just be silent. Dropbox is a tiny tool. I don't want to hear about it ever. _ever_
radihuq 6y ago
This was a great read, thanks for writing it up. As another person mentioned I especially liked and appreciated the bite-sized tips at the end! Definitely got some insight & inspiration I'll be using in my own projects
- mattgerstman 6y ago
  Thanks so much!
necrotic_comp 6y ago
No real question, but I do want to say thank you for writing and maintaining the daemon for Linux. I use Dropbox as, essentially, one disk shared across my many computers. This has been invaluable in keeping my life in order, and I'm a happy customer.
- mattgerstman 6y ago
  Thanks for the kind words. I'm not at all responsible for this, but I'll pass it on to our sync team.
mattgerstman 6y ago
Thanks so much for all the feedback! I'm signing off from answering comments.

Would love to hear more about API-QL. It doesn't sound like this is something available for public use yet. Is there any plan to open source this?

mattgerstman 6y ago
API-QL is essentially a glue layer to make our internal interface, Stone, play nicely with Apollo. We might open source some pieces of it, but the vast majority of it is code generation for very specific Dropbox use cases. https://github.com/dropbox/stone https://github.com/dropbox/stone

gustavomd 6y ago

Very well written and amazing job. I really trust Dropbox engineering teams. My only wish would be the return of the simple desktop app for those of us that just need ultra reliable synced folders (I use macOS). The app today is bloated and upon boot takes 600MB of RAM. Would you guys ever consider a streamlined version of the app for desktop?

mattgerstman 6y ago
This is definitely something we're talking about. We're aware there are a set of users who want just sync and we're figuring out how to ship that while making our other features discoverable.
- infogulch 6y ago
  HN is a tough crowd to sell everyman software to. Compared to your moderately tech literate person off the street, many here fiercely stand their ground on the computing solutions that they choose. Maybe this is a consequence of knowing how the sausage is made. I admire your goal to try to deliver value to both groups. I think this strategy is broadly underappreciated, and I expect it improves the product faster than focusing on either group exclusively.
  - mattgerstman 6y ago
    Thanks so much. We love to share how we build things with the tech community and we know the tradeoffs when we post them. We're just a bunch of people doing our best to do right by our users.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > This is definitely something we're talking about. We're aware there are a set of users who want just sync and we're figuring out how to ship that while making our other features discoverable. Excellent. I would go a bit further. I not only just want sync, but I'm willing to (mostly) give up the hosted mirroring in order to get unlimited user friendly device-device file synchronization[0]. On top of that, there are plenty of scenarios (largely around collaboration and/or mobile) where I would like to selectively opt-in to cloud mirroring, for which I'd be quite happy to pay a modest amount. So this folder of personal documents and ebooks[1] synced across these devices (potentially including another user's, if/when they are on the same local network) but no mirroring in the cloud, and that folder of photos synced only between my laptop and my phone, including cloud storage backup and mirroring ($). [0] Yes, I'm aware that there are plenty of solutions, starting with rsync etc., that I could cobble together, but most of them aren't particularly user-friendly. [1] BTW, have you thought of selling a Dropbox-centric e-reader?
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    Regarding [0]: Are you aware of Syncthing? It's p2p, allows you to select folders and exactly which devices they are shared with. I have personally had issues with it, but it seems like I'm the only one. The feature set seems to perfectly check out.
    - webmaven 6y ago
      I was aware of Syncthing, but last I checked there were some caveats that made it unsuitable. Looking again now, it seems those have been largely addressed, although if I want a hosted mirror I'll still have to set one up myself, and it looks like each shared folder has to be set up and authenticated on each device (ie. there seems to be no notion of a "user" who chooses which of their devices have a copy). I appreciate the nudge to look at it again, and at the very least this will stop me from having to pay attention to Dropbox's enforced case-insensitivity.
- T-hawk 6y ago
  Please add my voice to that. I just want sync. Not a fat client constantly blaring about features for sharing and comments and teams, while not actually syncing my files thanks to "Smart Sync". My current Dropbox subscription term ends in February. At that time I currently plan to leave Dropbox in favor of a service that just does sync and no other garbage.
solarkraft 6y ago
> The app today is bloated and upon boot takes 600MB of RAM Is that a joke or a bug?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

abathur 6y ago

I don't have time to absorb all of this right now, but I do still want to thank you for creating it. :) I consider what I see as process/project blogging to be one of the Internet's unsung heroes, but a lot of it has a narrow focus. As someone who hasn't worked on a project with this many hands involved (outside of OSS, at least), it's nice to get a peek behind that curtain. Looking forward to giving it a more careful read.

mattgerstman 6y ago
Thanks so much! I had the realization recently that we don't talk a lot about what engineers do outside of writing code and the Plus launch was the perfect narrative to talk about it.

gee_totes 6y ago

Definitely appreciated the tips at the bottom of the article. Did you use anything like Storybook to share the component library?

mattgerstman 6y ago
We do use storybook! We have an internal design system called DIG that may eventually be shared more publicly. Each individual feature gets a "product component library" which is a way to rapidly build components on top of DIG.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > We have an internal design system called DIG that may eventually be shared more publicly. DIG == Dropbox Interface Guide(lines)?

butz 6y ago

Will Dropbox client for Linux get some attention? It would be great if .dropbox directories adhered to XDG directory specs.

mattgerstman 6y ago
FWIW I've passed this note along to our sync team but I don't have a ton of insight here.

s9w 6y ago

Go scream at your boss. Dropbox has jumped the shark. Why am I getting red warning signs on my dropbox tray to advertise new features? I'm paying a shitton of money and using less than 1%. Take the money and just be silent. Dropbox is a tiny tool. I don't want to hear about it ever. _ever_

radihuq 6y ago

This was a great read, thanks for writing it up. As another person mentioned I especially liked and appreciated the bite-sized tips at the end! Definitely got some insight & inspiration I'll be using in my own projects

mattgerstman 6y ago
Thanks so much!

necrotic_comp 6y ago

No real question, but I do want to say thank you for writing and maintaining the daemon for Linux. I use Dropbox as, essentially, one disk shared across my many computers. This has been invaluable in keeping my life in order, and I'm a happy customer.

mattgerstman 6y ago
Thanks for the kind words. I'm not at all responsible for this, but I'll pass it on to our sync team.

mattgerstman 6y ago

Thanks so much for all the feedback! I'm signing off from answering comments.