4 ms·

All these contortions and complications, instead of just learning how to make pkgsrc packages, going to SmartOS and running in zones. Unbelievable, how needless

All these contortions and complications, instead of just learning how to make pkgsrc packages, going to SmartOS and running in zones. Unbelievable, how needlessly complex this is. Awful.

reducesuffering 6y ago
Have you read HN's most famous comment about Dropbox? Do you know why it's famous? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Annatar's saying there's a solution out there with fewer moving parts than the industry is moving towards. Rather than the dropbox situtaion that was the opposite. I'm not that familiar with any of these, but SmartOS sounded cool when I looked it up.
- Annatar 6y ago
  No, I haven't. My point on the other hand is that all that flapping in the fly.io article is too complex and completely unnecessary because that problem can be solved with a better, simpler solution which has existed far longer.
  - mrkurt 6y ago
    I also dislike docker. But it's a de facto standard. We have exactly one thing we want to "innovate": running app servers close to users. Which means we support what people already use. Postgres is great but I wouldn't choose to run it for fun. Our customers use Postgres. Node is not my favorite runtime, but we have good support for Node because it's popular. Devs are willing to package their apps as docker images. So we run Docker images. Your better, simpler solution would cause our company to fail. I'm very familiar with Joyent and SmartOS. They lost the container battle, despite the elegance.
    - Annatar 6y ago
      Nothing is lost. If you are IT professionals, it's your job to advise clients what to run, not the other way around. I know that when it comes to computers, everyone feels like they have something to say, but it's just like any other profession: we are the experts that went to university and have the requisite degrees stemming from our education, we are the experts with the help of our professional experience. Therefore we should be the leading force for our clientele, not the other way around. Customer is king, but that does not preclude or exclude professionals taking the leading role. If your sole business plan revolves around service, banking on a single piece of specific technology, your business is already doomed, as was every IT business before it. History is the teacher of life, and those who do not learn from history stand to repeat it, poorly and with dire consequences. Docker's days are numbered: too many scandals, Google gave up on it. It is only a function f(t) before it goes out of fashion, just like everything else in IT. Post scriptum: why persist on the illumos-zones-ZFS-configuration management with OS packaging constellation? Because it is bullet proof not for months or years, but decades thereafter. It is good business: less maintenance investment means more profit long term, and in business, it is the long game, and not trend pandering which counts. No business survived on trend pandering, for reasons which should be quite obvious. You already unpack Docker, and when I read what all you had to do it was obvious to me that what you are doing is far more expensive than if you had gone the SmartOS-lx branded zone-ZFS route; you could have chosen to do so with the bullet proof substrate that are the lx-brnaded zones, the illumos kernel, and ZFS. The customer in your model is none the wiser anyway but you did not do so, which is illogical, since you take it all apart and custom-deploy it on custom infrastructure anyway. The system engineering and maintenance costs will kill your business long term, not to mention what they will do to each and every one working on that in terms of health and personal life. Babysitting computers and software will never be a profitable position.
      - tptacek 6y ago
        Good note. Thanks. I cut my systems programming teeth on Solaris 2; maybe I can replace eBPF with STREAMS somehow too. You guys still do STREAMS?
        5y ago

All these contortions and complications, instead of just learning how to make pkgsrc packages, going to SmartOS and running in zones. Unbelievable, how needlessly complex this is. Awful.

reducesuffering 6y ago

Have you read HN's most famous comment about Dropbox? Do you know why it's famous? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

mixmastamyk 6y ago
Annatar's saying there's a solution out there with fewer moving parts than the industry is moving towards. Rather than the dropbox situtaion that was the opposite. I'm not that familiar with any of these, but SmartOS sounded cool when I looked it up.
Annatar 6y ago
No, I haven't. My point on the other hand is that all that flapping in the fly.io article is too complex and completely unnecessary because that problem can be solved with a better, simpler solution which has existed far longer.
- mrkurt 6y ago
  I also dislike docker. But it's a de facto standard. We have exactly one thing we want to "innovate": running app servers close to users. Which means we support what people already use. Postgres is great but I wouldn't choose to run it for fun. Our customers use Postgres. Node is not my favorite runtime, but we have good support for Node because it's popular. Devs are willing to package their apps as docker images. So we run Docker images. Your better, simpler solution would cause our company to fail. I'm very familiar with Joyent and SmartOS. They lost the container battle, despite the elegance.
  - Annatar 6y ago
    Nothing is lost. If you are IT professionals, it's your job to advise clients what to run, not the other way around. I know that when it comes to computers, everyone feels like they have something to say, but it's just like any other profession: we are the experts that went to university and have the requisite degrees stemming from our education, we are the experts with the help of our professional experience. Therefore we should be the leading force for our clientele, not the other way around. Customer is king, but that does not preclude or exclude professionals taking the leading role. If your sole business plan revolves around service, banking on a single piece of specific technology, your business is already doomed, as was every IT business before it. History is the teacher of life, and those who do not learn from history stand to repeat it, poorly and with dire consequences. Docker's days are numbered: too many scandals, Google gave up on it. It is only a function f(t) before it goes out of fashion, just like everything else in IT. Post scriptum: why persist on the illumos-zones-ZFS-configuration management with OS packaging constellation? Because it is bullet proof not for months or years, but decades thereafter. It is good business: less maintenance investment means more profit long term, and in business, it is the long game, and not trend pandering which counts. No business survived on trend pandering, for reasons which should be quite obvious. You already unpack Docker, and when I read what all you had to do it was obvious to me that what you are doing is far more expensive than if you had gone the SmartOS-lx branded zone-ZFS route; you could have chosen to do so with the bullet proof substrate that are the lx-brnaded zones, the illumos kernel, and ZFS. The customer in your model is none the wiser anyway but you did not do so, which is illogical, since you take it all apart and custom-deploy it on custom infrastructure anyway. The system engineering and maintenance costs will kill your business long term, not to mention what they will do to each and every one working on that in terms of health and personal life. Babysitting computers and software will never be a profitable position.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      Good note. Thanks. I cut my systems programming teeth on Solaris 2; maybe I can replace eBPF with STREAMS somehow too. You guys still do STREAMS?
      - 5y ago