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The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

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Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#91

Post by PommeDeTerre »

mrchess wrote: post #75
biscarch wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to have fallen into a version of this trap. MongoDB has made me a nice chunk of change as a consultant. These days when I mention MongoDB people don't even hide the crazy looks. The interview/meeting might as well be over then and there. Since mentioning mongo sets the conversation back, I've instead choosing to focus my energies delving deeper into ecosystems like Riak-Core/Erlang which many developers still…

Is MongoDB certainly declared "bad" now or something? I still thought Mongo is a viable option? Why would they give you crazy looks?

I think it's more just a matter of most people coming to the realization (after several years, for those who didn't realize it right away) that relational databases are what they want, and what they need.

There are very, very few situations where NoSQL databases are truly of any use. For practically all other cases, any time or effort savings promised when using a NoSQL database don't materialize in reality.

Take the claim that not having a schema is a benefit. This claim quickly falls apart when a huge amount of time and effort is needed to track data format/type/availability/constraints/etc. in an ad hoc fashion throughout all applications accessing the database. This is a huge amount of effort, and often duplicated code, in anything but the simplest scenarios. It's much more effective just to use a relational database and its support for defining a schema.

We see the same when it comes to querying using JavaScript. Maybe it works for simple queries, but those often aren't what we encounter in practice. SQL is by far the best we've got today when it comes to writing complex queries, and relational databases offer the best support for it.

Then there's ACIDity. "Eventual consistency" just doesn't cut it in the real world. Relational databases make it far easier, more practical and much safer to work with data in a transactional manner.

Many of the supposed strong points of NoSQL databases, like their sharding support, becomes irrelevant when using the replication support offered by so many relational databases.

It's not that NoSQL databases have been declared "bad", but instead it's just people realizing that the relational databases being used all along are really the best choice in all but a handful of cases.

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#92

Post by ahoyhere »

Believe it or not, what follows is meant to be a SUPPORTIVE comment.

> I wanted to be one of those founders, you know, the type that gets silly valuations and love from the name brand ventures firms, the type that gets written up by the tech press, the sort that powerful angels vouch for and send around glowing intros for as being “the next big thing,” and the sort that jets around to conferences.

I truly hope you've come away from all this and understood that the problem isn't 'them,' it's you.

Once you focus on identity — worse yet, how others perceive your identity — then it's just a hop, skip and jump to narcissism, when 90% of your effort and emotions is about projecting and protecting your identity at the sacrifice of making things happen, or worse yet, forming relationships.

It SOUNDS like you figured that out.

On the other hand, since you've already found yourself vulnerable to identity focus, you should watch yourself and make sure this "I Don't Care!" thing isn't a new way to form a (fragile) identity in need of propagation and defense.

Focusing on other people, and your work, is the way to avoid this trap.

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#93

Post by Redoubtable »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #34
Redoubtable wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could not agree with you more. Part of the reason I wrote this was so I could mentally reset myself to get back to work. Frankly I'm embarrassed I got caught in the trap and spent valuable emotional energy on it caring about it in the first place. - Julie

We make money. In the reality markets people pay us. And they pay us more for the product than it costs to create it. I understand you were venting here, but in this paragraph it sounds like you still care deeply about how the It crowd perceives you.

I'm sure I do or I wouldn't have felt the need to exorcise it in public. But I do definitely care that my business makes money and that what it costs us to make our product is less than what what we get paid for it. That is just running a business and answering to the market.

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#94

Post by Redoubtable »

ahoyhere wrote: post #92

Believe it or not, what follows is meant to be a SUPPORTIVE comment. > I wanted to be one of those founders, you know, the type that gets silly valuations and love from the name brand ventures firms, the type that gets written up by the tech press, the sort that powerful angels vouch for and send around glowing intros for as being “the next big thing,” and the sort that jets around to conferences. I truly hope you've…

Thanks for this! The fact that I got wrapped up in constructing the identity of a company (thank god not the actual product or how we related to our clients) to be appealing to someone that wasn't its core client was definitely my problem and not theirs!

While I can't deny that I was responding to a certain kind of risk/reward perception that has a certain value it wasn't right for what we ultimately wanted to build as a company.

And I think this happens in so many areas of life. How we date, how we pick our hobbies, how we choose our education. Because forming a core identity and a core business is actually tremendously hard. Picking up one that is already socially validated seems easier. It just isn't a recipe for long term happiness or success.

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#96

Post by onlyup »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #91
mrchess wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is MongoDB certainly declared "bad" now or something? I still thought Mongo is a viable option? Why would they give you crazy looks?

I think it's more just a matter of most people coming to the realization (after several years, for those who didn't realize it right away) that relational databases are what they want, and what they need. There are very, very few situations where NoSQL databases are truly of any use. For practically all other cases, any time or effort savings promised when using a NoSQL database don't materialize in reality. Take the…

Thanks for the post. I was about to start a project with CouchDB but was unsure why I was going to use it. I know relational databases/SQL better so I think I will stick with that.

Do you think there is benefit in using stuff like SQLAlchemy or should I write just SQL files/queries?

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#97

Post by pyre »

onlyup wrote: post #96
PommeDeTerre wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more just a matter of most people coming to the realization (after several years, for those who didn't realize it right away) that relational databases are what they want, and what they need. There are very, very few situations where NoSQL databases are truly of any use. For practically all other cases, any time or effort savings promised when using a NoSQL database don't materialize in reality. Take the…

Thanks for the post. I was about to start a project with CouchDB but was unsure why I was going to use it. I know relational databases/SQL better so I think I will stick with that. Do you think there is benefit in using stuff like SQLAlchemy or should I write just SQL files/queries?

  | Do you think there is benefit in using stuff like
  | SQLAlchemy or should I write just SQL files/queries?
If you're just in it for the learning, then maybe drop SQLAlchemy to get your hands dirty and learn; otherwise just use SQLAlchemy. If you're getting into really complex queries and optimizations you're going to have to resort to SQL anyways, even with SQLAlchemy. An ORM just allows you to abstract away most of the mundane SQL tasks.

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#98

Post by pyre »

FrojoS wrote: post #69
pud wrote: post #24

Generally, being profitable precludes a company from getting "silly [high] valuations" & buzz in Silicon Valley. Unless they're really, really profitable. Big valuations usually stem from not knowing how much a company will make once they start charging for stuff. So the "it" crowd works itself into a frenzy and VCs take a big gamble. But once you make a dollar, all the mystery is gone. You're judged & valued pretty…

Interesting. So "Lets not risk growth my premature monetization, like ads, which could repel early adopters." is often just an excuse to avoid income and thereby improve valuations?

Not necessarily. The issue is that usually there is no roadmap beyond:

1. Explosive Growth

2. ???

3. Profit!

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#99

Post by michaelochurch »

radio4fan wrote: post #5

What is this mysterious drivel? Who is brianvan5155 and why hasn't he made any comments? How has this made it to the front page? What can it all mean?

Life... dreams... hope... where do they come from? And where do they go? -- Kefka

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#100

Post by michaelochurch »

VC-istan isn't "technology". It's cutting-edge marketing, and only as technological as it needs to be in order to not look foolish in 2013. It took me a few years to understand that, if only because the disinvestment of our society in R&D, academia, and anything with a focus longer than one quarter has reached such completion as to leave our society too imbecilic to have a square sense of what technology even is.

That doesn't mean a company can't be technological and VC-funded, but the "cool kids" sideshow isn't about true technology. It can't be. The VPs and Product Managers are all imbeciles and the engineers, while smart in an IQ-sense, are too steeped in bad practices to know anything. (The Founders are talented marketers but 80% are sociopaths.)

The VC-istan "It" crowd is not comprised of technologists, but of people who've found it advantageous to incorporate technological fetishism into their vapid marketing. The jokers in the in-crowd don't know anything, and the best technologists only tag along to their projects if they can get something out of it... and those sorts of managerial conditions (hands-off management, high autonomy, interesting projects and self-direction) don't tend to last for long.

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