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NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

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Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#131

Post by fergie »

throwaway055 wrote: post #82
svendisnigh wrote: post #13

Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less proficient government agencies (apparently NSA was smart enough to see through the ruse). And then in turn sell the "spooky/mysterious" image to bunch of naive Stanford/Berkeley undergrads and convince them to work for peanuts. Sadly in 2017, their tech stack is falling apart, t…

I've heard Palantir is maybe the most credentials-/prestige-focused tech company in Silicon Valley. I remember thinking that sounds like a good way to build a below-average team that seems very impressive from the outside. When you look at what they're doing, this strategy actually starts to make a lot of sense. They're selling a product that's somewhat incomprehensible. The value of that product is very difficult to…

Yup- when you start thinking of Palantir as an IBM, a Cap Gemini or an Accenture, it starts making a lot more sense.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#132

Post by praulv »

I can't quite place them. On the one hand I don't see what their product offers that existing BI dashboard tools such as Tableau can't deal with.

On the other hand, 2 of my former, incredibly smart, non-douchey, genuine, down to earth colleagues (both non-white male if it matters) work for them so I'd question the brogrammer stereotype as I doubt they'd stick around if they were feeling out of place.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#133

Post by kpil »

halflings wrote: post #114
bm1362 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Java/Spring an issue here? Guess what powers Amazon, Google, Apple etc.

Not Java/Spring? Google at least is known to use C/C++ for its backend. Python is (or was?) used in YouTube.

I think java comes out as one of the most efficient and battle tested backend languages.

For data crunching, especially statistical jobs, Python is probably also a good fit although it's not as efficient but have a number of good statistical, mathematical and ai toolkits that seems to be more active.

For running more specialized jobs, R have even more tools, but is a bit more shaky as a general language although it is a nice functional language, as many tools are more scientists scaffolding rather than nice abstractions.

Then you have fortran and matlab. I've heard of using erlang as a fast real-time analytics tool too, but then you probably need to roll your own everything.

But what do you suggest? Node.js claim to fame is mainly that most web developers know it, and js have formed their mental image of what programing is and how a computer works.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#134

Post by drxzcl »

sytelus wrote: post #103
svendisnigh wrote: post #13

Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less proficient government agencies (apparently NSA was smart enough to see through the ruse). And then in turn sell the "spooky/mysterious" image to bunch of naive Stanford/Berkeley undergrads and convince them to work for peanuts. Sadly in 2017, their tech stack is falling apart, t…

If you want to write cross platform desktop apps, your choices are pretty much either Java, C++ and Python. Rest of the languages/platform either don't have great library support or simply not mature enough to deploy at scale. Now if you want some performance, more mature UX library and eliminate Python, you are limited to C++ and Java. Its much more harder to do UX stuff with C++ and finding great C++ developers has…

I have extensive experience writing professional (i.e. Not consumer oriented) desktop applications in both Python and C++, and you're right on the money.

Java may not be sexy or purty, but it works and you can actually hire people to do it.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#136

Post by dajohnson89 »

svendisnigh wrote: post #13

Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less proficient government agencies (apparently NSA was smart enough to see through the ruse). And then in turn sell the "spooky/mysterious" image to bunch of naive Stanford/Berkeley undergrads and convince them to work for peanuts. Sadly in 2017, their tech stack is falling apart, t…

Are you calling Java outdated? Or swing? Either way I think that's quite debatable.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#137

Post by downandout »

svendisnigh wrote: post #13

Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less proficient government agencies (apparently NSA was smart enough to see through the ruse). And then in turn sell the "spooky/mysterious" image to bunch of naive Stanford/Berkeley undergrads and convince them to work for peanuts. Sadly in 2017, their tech stack is falling apart, t…

>Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing).

This is the first fallacy of software engineering. In general, nobody cares what the tech stack powering a solution to a given problem is. If it solves the problem, then it is considered a success by customers. There are exceptions to this rule, but there aren't many, and they don't really apply to Palantir's model. In their case, as long as the system spits out the data it is supposed to, they could have used Visual Basic to program the backend and customers would still buy it if it worked as advertised.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#139

Post by mattacular »

quickthrower wrote: post #68
nebabyte wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A ton of their “products” are modern TypeScript + React UIs That's... not exactly better, tbh

Not getting this obsession with the tech stack ITT? You can run a profitable business even when using Java, Typescript and React. Infact choice of language probably makes less difference than us geeks would hooe. Outside of really bad language choices.

It's easy to hear a business is doing badly and then assume it must be their tech stack that is the central problem even though that is pretty unlikely.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#140

Post by dqv »

scottfr wrote: post #54
jitl wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This dig at Palantir’s stack is outright false. A ton of their “products” are modern TypeScript + React UIs over reasonable open-source datastores, and they open-source plenty of stuff from that stack. Check out this React component, which is pretty cool: https://palantir.github.io/react-mosaic/ Plenty more examples here: https://palantir.github.io

Their Blueprint React component library is also quite nice: http://blueprintjs.com/docs/#core/components/button

That component library rocks. It's one of the few that puts keyboard focus as a first-class citizen.
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