3 ms·

isn't it a meme on here that when dropbox was announced it got panned as a concept on here? Smth "I could just set this up using FTP and a unix box for free so

isn't it a meme on here that when dropbox was announced it got panned as a concept on here? Smth "I could just set this up using FTP and a unix box for free so why would I want to pay for it?" smth?

to11mtm 3y ago
It may have, I didn't really HN much at the time. On the other hand, for 'business' cases it was way, way easier to deal with than FTP, at least at the time. When dropbox was coming into vogue, I was working as a 'drafter' that happened to spend more than half of his time coding AutoLISP routines and doing larger automation/tooling efforts via VBA and C#. (Ironically, I didn't really do VBA for Excel but did do some C# for it[0]) But outside of all that, I was working in an environment with a lot of 'construction' folks. The 'Ask them to open internet explorer and they click on their AOL icon'[1] types. To say nothing of an IT department that required a lot of ceremony and wait-time to open up IP addresses for FTP use. Dropbox was a godsend. The UX was easy enough for the contractors to use, the IT department was overall fairly accepting of it, and frankly I thought it was great even if I made similar comments to my father about it when he asked me about "the cloud". All of that said, I do think it did get enshittified at some point, but I don't remember when or what it was. [0] - Bentley was, to my understanding, one of the few (only?) non-microsoft companies to have VBA support for their application. While the first things I wrote for it were in VBA (because I wasn't allowed to have VS at first,) after a certain point I was down to just a couple routines that were somehow faster to do in VBA than via the C# COM wrapper. Versus Excel, everything was VSTO. [1] - Actual phone call with a subcontractor.
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
Not exactly[1]. First comment said that they could do this using some command then after some explanation by the founder, the commenter said: "You are correct that this presents a very good, easy-to-install piece". The second comment said "This is genius. It's is problem everyone is having, and everyone knew it". Even just by quantity most commentators said it was great. Just first comment is taken as fact that it was panned by HN. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- Quarrelsome 3y ago
  wow thanks for necromancing the actual and the correction. <3.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

isn't it a meme on here that when dropbox was announced it got panned as a concept on here? Smth "I could just set this up using FTP and a unix box for free so why would I want to pay for it?" smth?

to11mtm 3y ago

It may have, I didn't really HN much at the time. On the other hand, for 'business' cases it was way, way easier to deal with than FTP, at least at the time. When dropbox was coming into vogue, I was working as a 'drafter' that happened to spend more than half of his time coding AutoLISP routines and doing larger automation/tooling efforts via VBA and C#. (Ironically, I didn't really do VBA for Excel but did do some C# for it[0]) But outside of all that, I was working in an environment with a lot of 'construction' folks. The 'Ask them to open internet explorer and they click on their AOL icon'[1] types. To say nothing of an IT department that required a lot of ceremony and wait-time to open up IP addresses for FTP use. Dropbox was a godsend. The UX was easy enough for the contractors to use, the IT department was overall fairly accepting of it, and frankly I thought it was great even if I made similar comments to my father about it when he asked me about "the cloud". All of that said, I do think it did get enshittified at some point, but I don't remember when or what it was. [0] - Bentley was, to my understanding, one of the few (only?) non-microsoft companies to have VBA support for their application. While the first things I wrote for it were in VBA (because I wasn't allowed to have VS at first,) after a certain point I was down to just a couple routines that were somehow faster to do in VBA than via the C# COM wrapper. Versus Excel, everything was VSTO. [1] - Actual phone call with a subcontractor.

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

Not exactly[1]. First comment said that they could do this using some command then after some explanation by the founder, the commenter said: "You are correct that this presents a very good, easy-to-install piece". The second comment said "This is genius. It's is problem everyone is having, and everyone knew it". Even just by quantity most commentators said it was great. Just first comment is taken as fact that it was panned by HN. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Quarrelsome 3y ago
wow thanks for necromancing the actual and the correction. <3.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]