Architecture astronauts take over • Hacker News Board

Re: Architecture astronauts take over

#41

Post by ejs » Thu, May 01, 2008, 2:57 PM UTC

maximilian wrote: post #24

dhouston wrote: post #2

we beg to differ that sync/sharing isn't a killer app ;)

I wish you guys would include me in the beta! I've been tooling around with JungleDisk which hasn't been working (which sucks!). I'm a grad student so I have a lot of back and forth between school and my computer and I'm always syncing files back and forth through email (which is such a pain!). File syncing is a big deal for me. The fact that you guys do version control sorta by default is awesome. I've been thinking…

hah i have the same problem, signed up a while ago. Does dropbox work with linux?

Re: Architecture astronauts take over

#42

Post by omouse » Thu, May 01, 2008, 3:09 PM UTC

sanj wrote: post #34

The term "Killer App" has gotten brutally watered down. And y'all aren't helping. From Wikipedia: "a killer app is an application so compelling that someone will buy the hardware or software components necessary to run it" Sorry, DropBox (while very, very well done) doesn't even come close to cutting it. It doesn't hold a candle to Visicalc. Or email. Or Photoshop.

Or video games.

Re: Architecture astronauts take over

#43

Post by nostrademons » Thu, May 01, 2008, 3:24 PM UTC

dhouston wrote: post #2

we beg to differ that sync/sharing isn't a killer app ;)

I was thinking as I read this that the "syncing" killer app would likely come from an adjacent field, rather than being designed specifically for syncing. Either version control (git) or backup (DropBox)...

Re: Architecture astronauts take over

#44

Post by dhs » Thu, May 01, 2008, 3:27 PM UTC

aston wrote: post #27

maximilian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you guys would include me in the beta! I've been tooling around with JungleDisk which hasn't been working (which sucks!). I'm a grad student so I have a lot of back and forth between school and my computer and I'm always syncing files back and forth through email (which is such a pain!). File syncing is a big deal for me. The fact that you guys do version control sorta by default is awesome. I've been thinking…

Max! You don't have your email in your profile...Shoot us an email.

If this is how it works, then here's another shameless attempt to hasten acceptance into your beta program (I've also applied for registration by the regular means you provide :-). If Dropbox works as advertised, I promise I'll pay a monthly subscription fee. This is something I want.

Re: Architecture astronauts take over

#45

Post by dgabriel » Thu, May 01, 2008, 3:31 PM UTC

Jesin wrote: post #40

Just want to point out, this is dated April 2001.

Um, actually: "This item ran on the Joel on Software homepage on Thursday, May 01, 2008"

Re: Architecture astronauts take over

#46

Post by jimbokun » Thu, May 01, 2008, 4:03 PM UTC

It struck me after reading the article that the company who has solved synchronization is Apple.

All of the data people really care about is on their iPhone/iPod. Contacts, photos, music, TV shows, movies, email, web access. When you think of it, iTunes main purpose is syncing and organizing your media. And with iTunes Store seamlessly syncs a lot of the data people care about from the Internet, also (for pay movies and music, but a lot of free podcasts, too).

While Microsoft continues to try to solve the synchronization problem as an abstraction, Apple has actually created something everyone uses because it Just Works.

Re: Architecture astronauts take over

#47

Post by delano » Thu, May 01, 2008, 4:27 PM UTC

omouse wrote: post #42

sanj wrote: post #34

The term "Killer App" has gotten brutally watered down. And y'all aren't helping. From Wikipedia: "a killer app is an application so compelling that someone will buy the hardware or software components necessary to run it" Sorry, DropBox (while very, very well done) doesn't even come close to cutting it. It doesn't hold a candle to Visicalc. Or email. Or Photoshop.

Or video games.

Or Winamp.

Re: Architecture astronauts take over

#48

Post by edw519 » Thu, May 01, 2008, 4:50 PM UTC

"And dammit foosball doesn't play itself."

I dunno. With some spare parts and a few hundred lines of code, Trevor Blackwell could probably make it happen.

Re: Architecture astronauts take over

#49

Post by delano » Thu, May 01, 2008, 5:05 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #35

I have become sick and tired of the carping and flaming you see from some folks whenever Joel publishes a rant, accusing him of douchebaggery and all sorts of sin. The usual behaviour is that he has one great insight, a bunch of entertaining ranting, and one egocentric point. And on the basis of this, the whole thing is junk and he is a has-been windbag. I don't go along with that sort of vilification. If a post has…

It sounds more like a dig on their programming experience.

Re: Architecture astronauts take over

#50

Post by raganwald » Thu, May 01, 2008, 5:12 PM UTC

delano wrote: post #49

raganwald wrote: post #35

I have become sick and tired of the carping and flaming you see from some folks whenever Joel publishes a rant, accusing him of douchebaggery and all sorts of sin. The usual behaviour is that he has one great insight, a bunch of entertaining ranting, and one egocentric point. And on the basis of this, the whole thing is junk and he is a has-been windbag. I don't go along with that sort of vilification. If a post has…

It sounds more like a dig on their programming experience.

I was trying to satarize all the people elsewhere complaining about the last paragraph. As you can see, I am not a very funny writer.

I like the post very much. His point about Lotus taking over MSFT reminded me of Jamie Zawinski's story about Collabra taking over Netscape:

"Our punishment for that success was that management saw this general-purpose mail reader and said, "since this mail reader is popular with normal people, we must now pimp it out to `The Enterprise', call it Groupware, and try to compete with Lotus Notes!"

"To do this, they bought a company called Collabra who had tried (and, mostly, failed) to do something similar to what we had accomplished. They bought this company and spliced 4 layers of management in above us. Somehow, Collabra managed to completely take control of Netscape: it was like Netscape had gotten acquired instead of the other way around.

"And then they went off into the weeds so badly that the Collabra-driven "3.0" release was obviously going to be so mind-blowingly late that "2.1" became "3.0" and "3.0" became "4.0". (So yeah, 3.0 didn't just seem like the bugfix patch-release for 2.0: it was.)"

http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html