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Tailscale reminds me of Fly.io; fantastic tech that "just works", run by people who know what they're doing and know how to write about it. What other companies

Tailscale reminds me of Fly.io; fantastic tech that "just works", run by people who know what they're doing and know how to write about it. What other companies belong in this all-too-exclusive cohort?

muhammadusman 5y ago
I used to think Cloudflare was in this category but maybe not anymore?
- pestaa 5y ago
  What changed your mind?
SkyMarshal 5y ago
Stripe
mtremsal 5y ago
I have the same two companies on the infra-side. A third, on the security-side of things is Thinkst (https://canary.tools/ https://canary.tools/).
- tptacek 5y ago
  Thinkst is so great.
- technobabbler 5y ago
  It's interesting that unlike most of the other loved companies, this one has no free tier. How did people come to take a chance on them without being able to demo their product?
  - mtremsal 5y ago
    IIRC people get started for free with canary tokens: https://canarytokens.org https://canarytokens.org
ternaryoperator 5y ago
I'd include Backblaze
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  It is so good I forget I use it. Thanks for the reminder!
technobabbler 5y ago
IMHO: Vercel/Next.js and their wonderful changelogs and documentation. Probably the "coolest" tech company in my book. Cloudflare, who almost single-handedly pushes the CDN industry ahead. So much respect for what they do and how they explain it in easy to understand terms. IntelliJ family of IDEs and their extensive release notes and forum discussions; it can be a bit overwhelming and disorganized at times though My personal favorite headless CMS: DatoCMS, small company but highly involved devs and iterating very quickly Google USED to be really good at this long ago, but since Alphabet, they've become less and less transparent and more and more evil Airtable, for bridging that gap between Excel and a proper database, with a heavy focus on UX and great release notes
- d0gbread 5y ago
  Similar to Airtable, Coda is another nice example. Their engineering team has put out some amazing work, and their release notes (via email) are typically very well done, with concise gifs of the functionality. It's so easy to skip those bells and whistles. I will say to Google's benefit, the Data Studio team is building a pretty nice product, but there are some crazy gaps and the custom connector docs leave a lot to be desired.
crummy 5y ago
I noticed the same thing the other week, and in trying to come up with a category described them as "not-overengineered, high UX, modern web tools". The other software I'd put in that bucket is Caddy.
quickthrower2 5y ago
I found fly.io was slow and hung when trying to deploy. I might try it again in a year. Vercel definitely just works and has been a wonderful experience using NextJS for a side project
- chrisweekly 5y ago
  Interesting. As a long-time Next.js user, I'm deeply disappointed by the way Vercel (the company, fka Zeit) has so tightly coupled vercel (the platform / hosting service, fka 'Now') with Next.js (the framework). I absolutely loved Zeit (the company, before it was rebranded Vercel), with its amazing DX-first ecosystem. But now, to the detriment of it all, only those specific patterns of Next.js usage that align perfectly with the vercel hosting platform's opinionated approach are treated as first-class citizens. Vercel the company makes its money from vercel the hosting platform, and it employs all the Next.js maintainers. As a result, simple economic incentives have shaped the framework, making it much more rigid and limited than it'd otherwise be. Examples include: - proper support for "12-Factor App"-style immutable build artifacts, deployable to multiple envs (eg DEV, QA, STAGE, PERF, UAT, PROD). The way .env files are handled makes this incredibly cumbersome. Vercel only supports (local development) + (preview deploys) + (production), so for anything outside that tri-fold paradigm you're on your own. - removal of support for custom servers - reliance on unofficial 3rd-party serverless framework to support deployment to Lambda@Edge, and problematic or missing documentation for any non-Vercel serverless deploy target I still think Next.js per se is pretty great*, but in my direct experience working with consulting clients to leverage it in their non-Vercel, multi-environment infrastructure, the pain points are significant and caused largely by the coupling I described. If you embrace vercel as the hosting platform, with its specific conventions and limitations, and can accept severe vendor lock-in, then sure, it's going to be a pretty smooth ride. *For my part, when it comes to picking a React-based framework that provides SSR / BFF, Remix.run is looking better and better all the time.

muhammadusman 5y ago

I used to think Cloudflare was in this category but maybe not anymore?

pestaa 5y ago
What changed your mind?

SkyMarshal 5y ago

Stripe

mtremsal 5y ago

I have the same two companies on the infra-side. A third, on the security-side of things is Thinkst (https://canary.tools/ https://canary.tools/).

tptacek 5y ago
Thinkst is so great.
technobabbler 5y ago
It's interesting that unlike most of the other loved companies, this one has no free tier. How did people come to take a chance on them without being able to demo their product?
- mtremsal 5y ago
  IIRC people get started for free with canary tokens: https://canarytokens.org https://canarytokens.org

ternaryoperator 5y ago

I'd include Backblaze

quickthrower2 5y ago
It is so good I forget I use it. Thanks for the reminder!

technobabbler 5y ago

IMHO: Vercel/Next.js and their wonderful changelogs and documentation. Probably the "coolest" tech company in my book. Cloudflare, who almost single-handedly pushes the CDN industry ahead. So much respect for what they do and how they explain it in easy to understand terms. IntelliJ family of IDEs and their extensive release notes and forum discussions; it can be a bit overwhelming and disorganized at times though My personal favorite headless CMS: DatoCMS, small company but highly involved devs and iterating very quickly Google USED to be really good at this long ago, but since Alphabet, they've become less and less transparent and more and more evil Airtable, for bridging that gap between Excel and a proper database, with a heavy focus on UX and great release notes

d0gbread 5y ago
Similar to Airtable, Coda is another nice example. Their engineering team has put out some amazing work, and their release notes (via email) are typically very well done, with concise gifs of the functionality. It's so easy to skip those bells and whistles. I will say to Google's benefit, the Data Studio team is building a pretty nice product, but there are some crazy gaps and the custom connector docs leave a lot to be desired.

crummy 5y ago

I noticed the same thing the other week, and in trying to come up with a category described them as "not-overengineered, high UX, modern web tools". The other software I'd put in that bucket is Caddy.

quickthrower2 5y ago

I found fly.io was slow and hung when trying to deploy. I might try it again in a year. Vercel definitely just works and has been a wonderful experience using NextJS for a side project

chrisweekly 5y ago
Interesting. As a long-time Next.js user, I'm deeply disappointed by the way Vercel (the company, fka Zeit) has so tightly coupled vercel (the platform / hosting service, fka 'Now') with Next.js (the framework). I absolutely loved Zeit (the company, before it was rebranded Vercel), with its amazing DX-first ecosystem. But now, to the detriment of it all, only those specific patterns of Next.js usage that align perfectly with the vercel hosting platform's opinionated approach are treated as first-class citizens. Vercel the company makes its money from vercel the hosting platform, and it employs all the Next.js maintainers. As a result, simple economic incentives have shaped the framework, making it much more rigid and limited than it'd otherwise be. Examples include: - proper support for "12-Factor App"-style immutable build artifacts, deployable to multiple envs (eg DEV, QA, STAGE, PERF, UAT, PROD). The way .env files are handled makes this incredibly cumbersome. Vercel only supports (local development) + (preview deploys) + (production), so for anything outside that tri-fold paradigm you're on your own. - removal of support for custom servers - reliance on unofficial 3rd-party serverless framework to support deployment to Lambda@Edge, and problematic or missing documentation for any non-Vercel serverless deploy target I still think Next.js per se is pretty great*, but in my direct experience working with consulting clients to leverage it in their non-Vercel, multi-environment infrastructure, the pain points are significant and caused largely by the coupling I described. If you embrace vercel as the hosting platform, with its specific conventions and limitations, and can accept severe vendor lock-in, then sure, it's going to be a pretty smooth ride. *For my part, when it comes to picking a React-based framework that provides SSR / BFF, Remix.run is looking better and better all the time.