Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#251

Post by chr1 » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 4:00 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #247

outworlder wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who prefers JavaScript to Lisp or SmallTalk is just wrong. I also happen to share that opinion, but the trick is to avoid falling into the Smug Lisp Weenie trap. It is amazing how primitive most editors are in comparison to Emacs. However, what is also amazing is how fast they are progressing. I've been trying (of all things!) Atom, and it is already adequate for most folks. Just the other day I've overhead…

> the trick is to avoid falling into the Smug Lisp Weenie trap. Yeah, I know — that's why I included a shoutout to SmallTalk, another great language. There are any number of truly great languages out there (ML, Erlang also leap to mind), although not all of them are great for writing a great editor. It's hard to avoid being a Smug Lisp Weenie when one sees so much effort wasted on haphazardly reinventing stuff which…

One of the most important metrics for a language is the number of people using it.

For new programmers learning elisp adds possibility to create best possible editor on base of emacs (a problem they still don't want to solve), learning javascript allows to find a job (a problem many want to solve). When they learn javascript for their day job, they like the language that gives them power to create things, and they don't see emacs as great, because what they can do for js based editor in hours, will take them months in emacs.

But all that aside, the most important advantage building editor in the browser instead of in emacs, is the huge amount of work that large groups of very good engineers put into making browsers fast, stable and well documented. Small emacs team never can make the part of emacs written in c on par with browser, even for handling the small number of features needed for the ide.

This is what Steve Yegge predicted in 2008 http://steve-yegge.blogspot.am/2008/04/xemacs-is-dead-long-l... http://steve-yegge.blogspot.am/2008/11/ejacs-javascript-inte...

So on one hand we had to redo some of the things lisp had acomplished earlier, on the other hand there is a high chance we won't have to redo in the future what web is doing now.

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#252

Post by bastijn » Fri, Jul 15, 2016, 7:59 PM UTC

solipsism wrote: post #227

bastijn wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... > You're right, but all you'd have to do is build cloud9 yourself. > I recently.. There, I fixed it for you. Now why would anyone want to reinvent the wheel again?

Eh.. what? Cloud9 is the reinvention of the wheel. That's the point you missed. With far fewer features, it just happens to be packaged together nicely to suit a particular purpose. Cloud 9 is one of many. In 3 years you won't remember the name.

It might be, but so was google. In addition, some of the greatest software is nothing more than bundling the right components together that existed before. Microsoft Office is not exactly unique, emacs can do that and was available well before it (emacs can do everything!). Wordpress is not really innovative, it's just a collection of things others already had, yet it is huge now. Point is, Emacs is missing to much to equal cloud9 right now. It might all be somewhere, but it isn't readily available in a form users of cloud9 would like.

So reinventing the wheel? If you refer to some magical emacs setup living somewhere on a fictional users local machine which is being cloned and made very real and available to the world. Yes they are reinventing the wheel. If it's easy, please make the fictional emacs become real and share it with us in a shown HN. I think there is a difference between a hacky approach that works and a product.

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#253

Post by goldenkey » Sun, Jul 17, 2016, 12:13 PM UTC

jwoah12 wrote: post #40

goldenkey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the best job? Because working for them was the worst work environment I ever experienced in 15 years of employment as a software development engineer. Amazon may have some cheap prices and their customer service has the margins available to offer refunds/replacements quickly. But that all is easy guise. Amazon is rotten inside. Each product team does whatever it wants. So how long can the exterior hold a toxic s…

Not sure what team you were on, but in my time at Amazon I never saw a company whose teams were more in-sync in terms of process, tools, frameworks, languages, etc. Say what you will about the work environment, but it's saying something that with the churn you mention (which is real), they are still able to deliver consistently. It's a well-oiled machine.

I worked for AWS. I wont say much more. The average employee churn stats speak for themselves. Amazon burns folks out. Uses them up. Not like the valley at all. Leadership principles [1] door desks, bezos cult.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/p34qgjcv93n37yd

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#254

Post by goldenkey » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 2:19 PM UTC

wiredone wrote: post #206

goldenkey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the best job? Because working for them was the worst work environment I ever experienced in 15 years of employment as a software development engineer. Amazon may have some cheap prices and their customer service has the margins available to offer refunds/replacements quickly. But that all is easy guise. Amazon is rotten inside. Each product team does whatever it wants. So how long can the exterior hold a toxic s…

#SourGrapes Why do 27k engineers (in Seattle alone) need to write in the same language to make a service successful? How many SAAS startups have you worked at? How does Amazon/AWS compare to this? I think you're out of touch and/or lacking context.

Nice hashtag. This isn't twitter though. Ive worked at exactly 17 startups. AWS was a steaming pile of sh!t with robotic middle managers, most on visas from the curry capitals of the world. Theres no necessity for the same exact language to be used. But when each team is just mavericking their own thing hoping it gets picked to be added to "the panel" you get a grab bag of absolute shit. If only you saw the code behind these services....