3 ms·

Hi, y'all. Amy here. If you've got a real question, I'd be glad to answer it. EDIT: As of 4pm eastern I'm off to meet my interior designer and then attend a jo

Hi, y'all. Amy here. If you've got a real question, I'd be glad to answer it. EDIT: As of 4pm eastern I'm off to meet my interior designer and then attend a joinery demo at a wood shop so it may be a bit but I will absolutely read & respond to your questions later or tomorrow. My goal is to share. And maybe mock people a little, if they can't think up an original insult when they attack me.

drewmck 14y ago
You mentioned the logistical, technical and financial problems involved. Was part of the problem that you simply lost interest in the project?
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  Good question. Not at all. We were exhausted, but we love the project. I still hope that if we come across the right hire(s), we'll revive it. But I'm not going to spend a year of my life desperately hustling to hire (which still may not work) instead of working on the profitable product we already have.
bdavisx 14y ago
No questions, but hopefully the naysayers and trolls won't bother you this time around. I've certainly got to the point where I DGAF about other peoples opinions - at least people on the internet. Heck, I prefer Java for developing applications, but around here a large number of people would consider me an idiot for just thinking about Java, let alone actually using it.
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  Thanks for the sentiment. They may show up, but they never bother me!
bostonOU 14y ago
Have you guys considered open-sourcing the code and/or providing some detailed info on the architecture you've built?
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  We won't open source, for a variety of reasons. One reason is that if we serendipitously meet the right dev/hiring manager, we will hire them and revive the project. Secondly, as all bigcos who randomly outsourced a dead project can tell you, OSSing a huge project solves no real problems. Thirdly, neither of us will run an OSS project for it, and fourthly, it's a bit of a beast. You can't just pop Charm on heroku and expect it to run at speed. So, no OSSing. As for the architecture, it was a Rails app with fully-live Backbone/CoffeeScript UI, a tuned Ruby cron job for scraping mail (POP, IMAP), a Postgres database and I forget which full-text search engine because we must have tried all of them before we settled on one. Nothing terribly fancy.
  - bostonOU 14y ago
    I understand your hope that you can resurrect the project. I was more interested in OSS for the opportunity to learn through reading the code and looking through your server setup.
mijustin 14y ago
Do you think bootstrappers should focus on smaller products (that are less complex)?
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  Absofrigginglutely. Until (and unless) you have the people to work on scale.
spohlenz 14y ago
I don't mean to dwell on the technical issues, but I'd be very curious to hear more about the performance issues you encountered that the Rails Core members couldn't resolve. Was there ever any resolution apart from downgrading to 2.x, and are there certain things that should be avoided in Rails 3.x?
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  Whatever it was, it is gone now. This was Rails 3 early days… very early days. The problem was in the development environment only. It was a crazy memory leak — 50MB every page load or so. As you can imagine it because so unbearably slow we couldn't develop in it. Bizarrely it didn't manifest in production (even if we just flipped the bit to run mongrel — or was it nginx at the time ? — in production on the same dev computer/user/PATH, etc). You'd think that would make it easier to track down, but weirdly, it didn't. I don't mind at all answering technical questions, ask away. What I object to is people who spot a jargon term or two they understand and fail to read all the surrounding paragraphs, and then lambast me for something they know nothing about. Which you clearly didn't do :)
mnutt 14y ago
Being the sole person responsible for a system that customers rely on 24x7 to make them money is just about the most stressful thing I've ever experienced as a developer, so I can definitely relate to that weight on your shoulders. If it's any small consolation, I'll bet you beat yourselves up about the downtime issues way more than your customers ever would.
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  Actually… I didn't really beat myself up about the downtime. I am totally over beating myself up for things… it just makes it harder to fix them and it's not as if my guilt would help anyone else feel better! It was upsetting, though, on an intellectual level. I wanted to do it better.
priornix 14y ago
Hi Amy, Thanks for sharing your experiences in such an open manner. It certainly takes much courage and bravery to shutting down your service and even more so, writing honestly about it. Could I ask you a few questions: - Is it true to say that if this product required less maintenance (in terms of uptime, server administration, future migration), you would not have abandoned it? - Secondly, assuming that you are not against raising external funding (which you are not in favour of, as mentioned in your blog post) and hiring the right team for it, would it be fair to say that you would be willing to continue with Charm? - Lastly, and hypothetically, if Freckle and your other opportunities were not around, would you have continued with Charm? Would it be fair to propose that because of the high maintenance required by Charm upon you and your team, the opportunity cost is simply too high, relative to the other options that you have? Thank you, and hope to hear from you. :)
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  1. I think we gotta talk about the word "abandoned," which to me involves letting something languish without attention, which is exactly what we didn't do. But aside from disagreeing with that word choice… Would we not have carefully shut it down if it wasn't for the running-of-it issues… hard to say. Aside from the server problems, I described our staffing / resource problems. We didn't have enough staff to keep building Charm, adding features our users deserved. This is a probelm. 2. Not sure what the funding part has to do with willing to work on Charm. I will never, ever, ever take funding, unless it's to pull a 37signals or a Github — on completely my terms for a tiny sliver of the company — to get a personal advisor or a big "in." But that I doubt (doubt we'd ever get big enough for that to be attractive to an investor). So, assuming I wasn't against funding is too big an assumption to make. 3. Good question. If Charm were our only baby, it would have been much easier to keep going… though frankly I don't think we ever would have attempted Charm as a first product (that bit of sense we lost after the success of Freckle). The opportunity cost, as you say, was huge.
pbiggar 14y ago
I'm curious whether you looked at "selling" it to another team? Something like "run this product as your startup, we'll keep 20%" or similar. When I see folks shut down products or pivot to something else, I wonder if this approach is workable. WDYT?

drewmck 14y ago

You mentioned the logistical, technical and financial problems involved. Was part of the problem that you simply lost interest in the project?

ahoyhere 14y ago
Good question. Not at all. We were exhausted, but we love the project. I still hope that if we come across the right hire(s), we'll revive it. But I'm not going to spend a year of my life desperately hustling to hire (which still may not work) instead of working on the profitable product we already have.

bdavisx 14y ago

No questions, but hopefully the naysayers and trolls won't bother you this time around. I've certainly got to the point where I DGAF about other peoples opinions - at least people on the internet. Heck, I prefer Java for developing applications, but around here a large number of people would consider me an idiot for just thinking about Java, let alone actually using it.

ahoyhere 14y ago
Thanks for the sentiment. They may show up, but they never bother me!

bostonOU 14y ago

Have you guys considered open-sourcing the code and/or providing some detailed info on the architecture you've built?

ahoyhere 14y ago
We won't open source, for a variety of reasons. One reason is that if we serendipitously meet the right dev/hiring manager, we will hire them and revive the project. Secondly, as all bigcos who randomly outsourced a dead project can tell you, OSSing a huge project solves no real problems. Thirdly, neither of us will run an OSS project for it, and fourthly, it's a bit of a beast. You can't just pop Charm on heroku and expect it to run at speed. So, no OSSing. As for the architecture, it was a Rails app with fully-live Backbone/CoffeeScript UI, a tuned Ruby cron job for scraping mail (POP, IMAP), a Postgres database and I forget which full-text search engine because we must have tried all of them before we settled on one. Nothing terribly fancy.
- bostonOU 14y ago
  I understand your hope that you can resurrect the project. I was more interested in OSS for the opportunity to learn through reading the code and looking through your server setup.

mijustin 14y ago

Do you think bootstrappers should focus on smaller products (that are less complex)?

ahoyhere 14y ago
Absofrigginglutely. Until (and unless) you have the people to work on scale.

spohlenz 14y ago

I don't mean to dwell on the technical issues, but I'd be very curious to hear more about the performance issues you encountered that the Rails Core members couldn't resolve. Was there ever any resolution apart from downgrading to 2.x, and are there certain things that should be avoided in Rails 3.x?

ahoyhere 14y ago
Whatever it was, it is gone now. This was Rails 3 early days… very early days. The problem was in the development environment only. It was a crazy memory leak — 50MB every page load or so. As you can imagine it because so unbearably slow we couldn't develop in it. Bizarrely it didn't manifest in production (even if we just flipped the bit to run mongrel — or was it nginx at the time ? — in production on the same dev computer/user/PATH, etc). You'd think that would make it easier to track down, but weirdly, it didn't. I don't mind at all answering technical questions, ask away. What I object to is people who spot a jargon term or two they understand and fail to read all the surrounding paragraphs, and then lambast me for something they know nothing about. Which you clearly didn't do :)

mnutt 14y ago

Being the sole person responsible for a system that customers rely on 24x7 to make them money is just about the most stressful thing I've ever experienced as a developer, so I can definitely relate to that weight on your shoulders. If it's any small consolation, I'll bet you beat yourselves up about the downtime issues way more than your customers ever would.

ahoyhere 14y ago
Actually… I didn't really beat myself up about the downtime. I am totally over beating myself up for things… it just makes it harder to fix them and it's not as if my guilt would help anyone else feel better! It was upsetting, though, on an intellectual level. I wanted to do it better.

priornix 14y ago

Hi Amy, Thanks for sharing your experiences in such an open manner. It certainly takes much courage and bravery to shutting down your service and even more so, writing honestly about it. Could I ask you a few questions: - Is it true to say that if this product required less maintenance (in terms of uptime, server administration, future migration), you would not have abandoned it? - Secondly, assuming that you are not against raising external funding (which you are not in favour of, as mentioned in your blog post) and hiring the right team for it, would it be fair to say that you would be willing to continue with Charm? - Lastly, and hypothetically, if Freckle and your other opportunities were not around, would you have continued with Charm? Would it be fair to propose that because of the high maintenance required by Charm upon you and your team, the opportunity cost is simply too high, relative to the other options that you have? Thank you, and hope to hear from you. :)

ahoyhere 14y ago
1. I think we gotta talk about the word "abandoned," which to me involves letting something languish without attention, which is exactly what we didn't do. But aside from disagreeing with that word choice… Would we not have carefully shut it down if it wasn't for the running-of-it issues… hard to say. Aside from the server problems, I described our staffing / resource problems. We didn't have enough staff to keep building Charm, adding features our users deserved. This is a probelm. 2. Not sure what the funding part has to do with willing to work on Charm. I will never, ever, ever take funding, unless it's to pull a 37signals or a Github — on completely my terms for a tiny sliver of the company — to get a personal advisor or a big "in." But that I doubt (doubt we'd ever get big enough for that to be attractive to an investor). So, assuming I wasn't against funding is too big an assumption to make. 3. Good question. If Charm were our only baby, it would have been much easier to keep going… though frankly I don't think we ever would have attempted Charm as a first product (that bit of sense we lost after the success of Freckle). The opportunity cost, as you say, was huge.

pbiggar 14y ago

I'm curious whether you looked at "selling" it to another team? Something like "run this product as your startup, we'll keep 20%" or similar. When I see folks shut down products or pivot to something else, I wonder if this approach is workable. WDYT?