Au Revoir • Hacker News Board

Re: Au Revoir

#101

Post by callumjones » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #43

I think their blog being hugged to death is a good example of how this technology (read: web backend tech in general, not containers) is still too complicated for people in general to use it for simple cases, like scaling the load of otherwise static content. (It's wordpress, but still) We need solutions that require less resources and smaller learning curves.

I don't understand why companies take on hosting their blog and marketing page (usually the homepage) when it isn't their core competency and a distraction for the engineering team to maintain.

It looks like this is true for Docker which seems to be hosting it themselves instead of using Wordpress.com

» nslookup blog.docker.com Server: 192.168.86.1 Address: 192.168.86.1#53

Non-authoritative answer: blog.docker.com canonical name = blog-1556129762.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com.

Re: Au Revoir

#102

Post by Godel_unicode » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #23

It always amazes me how you can convince a founder/CEO is not right man for the job, and slowly push him away. Companies that succeed are driven by burning vision, not by day-to-day operation people. It might make feel the companies run smoother for some time, but day-to-day executives are harmful to a company core vision leading to boring companies if they manage to sustain profitability in the long run at all.

Counterpoint: Google brought in an established CEO to get the nuts and bolts of being a big company working correctly. I would say that Google is pretty successful.

Re: Au Revoir

#103

Post by manigandham » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #43

I think their blog being hugged to death is a good example of how this technology (read: web backend tech in general, not containers) is still too complicated for people in general to use it for simple cases, like scaling the load of otherwise static content. (It's wordpress, but still) We need solutions that require less resources and smaller learning curves.

What does this have to do with containers? They just need a CDN in front of the site.

Re: Au Revoir

#104

Post by maerF0x0 » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

romanhn wrote: post #41

hartator wrote: post #23

It always amazes me how you can convince a founder/CEO is not right man for the job, and slowly push him away. Companies that succeed are driven by burning vision, not by day-to-day operation people. It might make feel the companies run smoother for some time, but day-to-day executives are harmful to a company core vision leading to boring companies if they manage to sustain profitability in the long run at all.

There is a reason why most startups don't go big - burning vision is not even close to being the right formula for success. Running a company of 10 people is VERY different from running a company of 100, which is VERY VERY different from running a company of 1000. Just like precious few individual contributors are comfortable with and able to contribute meaningfully in this wide range of environments, it doesn't make…

> Running a company of 10 people is VERY different from running a company of 100, which is VERY VERY different from running a company of 1000

IMO thats a classist lie that keeps people in their place. Any reasonably smart CEO can learn his way from 10 - 10000. Yes, (s)he may not be capable of 10k on day one, but they can grow along the way.

Re: Au Revoir

#105

Post by smallbigfish » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #43

I think their blog being hugged to death is a good example of how this technology (read: web backend tech in general, not containers) is still too complicated for people in general to use it for simple cases, like scaling the load of otherwise static content. (It's wordpress, but still) We need solutions that require less resources and smaller learning curves.

> being hugged to death

Whenever I read about this I can't help to think that people don't make a good use of a load balancer like HAProxy in front of their web-servers. Even if it's a single server behind the load balancer.

There's this sweet spot where your server is handling requests as fast as it can but if you cross above it everything halts. To make it simple, this usually happens when one or more hardware resources (CPU, RAM, disk) reaches 90% utilization.

So just do some basic benchmarks and find that sweet spot and put a limit in HAProxy. Say 100 concurrent connections for static assets and 50 concurrent connections for everything else.

All requests above the limit will go in a HAProxy queue but they should not stay there for long because the web-server is able to work at full speed without being overloaded.

PS: I have quite a dream. To write some fabulous blog post that reaches the HN front page and serve it from a raspberry pi device. Too bad I don't write at all.

Re: Au Revoir

#106

Post by Godel_unicode » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

jwildeboer wrote: post #82

hartator wrote: post #23

It always amazes me how you can convince a founder/CEO is not right man for the job, and slowly push him away. Companies that succeed are driven by burning vision, not by day-to-day operation people. It might make feel the companies run smoother for some time, but day-to-day executives are harmful to a company core vision leading to boring companies if they manage to sustain profitability in the long run at all.

Disagree. Counter example: Red Hat (disclaimer: I’m at Red Hat since almost 13 years). Founded by realistic visionaries (Bob Young and Mark Ewing). Bob was smart enough to bring in Matthew Szulik, who gave Red Hat structure and growth. And Matthew was smart enough to hand over to Jim Whitehurst. Red Hat is nowadays a smooth running company with 64 quarters of growth, with a portfolio that goes far beyond Linux. Execu…

This is a good point. I think that a company needs burning passion at the team level in order to succeed, and calm reasoning heads handling the day to day to allow those passionate people to continue to do what they do.

Re: Au Revoir

#107

Post by nodesocket » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

callumjones wrote: post #101

peterwwillis wrote: post #43

I think their blog being hugged to death is a good example of how this technology (read: web backend tech in general, not containers) is still too complicated for people in general to use it for simple cases, like scaling the load of otherwise static content. (It's wordpress, but still) We need solutions that require less resources and smaller learning curves.

I don't understand why companies take on hosting their blog and marketing page (usually the homepage) when it isn't their core competency and a distraction for the engineering team to maintain. It looks like this is true for Docker which seems to be hosting it themselves instead of using Wordpress.com » nslookup blog.docker.com Server: 192.168.86.1 Address: 192.168.86.1#53 Non-authoritative answer: blog.docker.com ca…

Or use WpEngine or FlyWheel (https://getflywheel.com).

Re: Au Revoir

#108

Post by justicezyx » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #23

It always amazes me how you can convince a founder/CEO is not right man for the job, and slowly push him away. Companies that succeed are driven by burning vision, not by day-to-day operation people. It might make feel the companies run smoother for some time, but day-to-day executives are harmful to a company core vision leading to boring companies if they manage to sustain profitability in the long run at all.

At least for fundamental things like containers, Docker's current founder definitely is not a match for many other people in technical capability and experiences.

The later part is more severe.

Re: Au Revoir

#109

Post by OtterCoder » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

zenlikethat wrote: post #90

seanp2k2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Static site generators are an infinitely better choice for making actual blogs. Wordpress has evolved into a CMS similar to Drupal or Joomla with all the available plugins. You can make it into a store or a wiki or basically anything, but you probably shouldn’t. Wordpress was really cool back in the PHP5 days, but Moveable Type and other “old school” static CMS generators always scaled better. Today with node and the…

Try getting 5+ marketing people to learn git and GitHub sometime and let me know how it goes.

Git is not for deployment. Also, hardcoding blog posts in the repo is a dumb solution, and not necessary for a static site. The user built markup should be separate from the code that generates static pages from it.

Re: Au Revoir

#110

Post by sah2ed » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #23

It always amazes me how you can convince a founder/CEO is not right man for the job, and slowly push him away. Companies that succeed are driven by burning vision, not by day-to-day operation people. It might make feel the companies run smoother for some time, but day-to-day executives are harmful to a company core vision leading to boring companies if they manage to sustain profitability in the long run at all.

It called facing reality and realizing that certain phases in a company's growth require having someone with real world experience at the helm.

It's the reason why John Doerr brought in Eric Schmidt as Google's CEO for adult supervision. Good investors, in addition to bringing cash, also bring with them accumulated experience from previous rodeos, which means they'll be able to recommend a few qualified hires for the up hill battle ahead, if it is clear the founder is lacking in requisite experience.