I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#171

Post by no_wizard » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 3:36 PM UTC

eldavido wrote: post #33

osium598 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anil Dash is one of the most notorious social justice warriors in the tech world. It's unfortunate Fog Creek made him its CEO - I don't predict the company will flourish under him, since he seems more concerned with promoting an airy political agenda than with making good products. He's non-technical (I don't think he's ever written a line of code in his life, and knows next to nothing about the actual craft of build…

So, two things. I used to really respect Joel Spolsky. I've read all of his stuff and really liked it. But I can't help thinking that Fog Creek just isn't that important of a company. As a decidedly "technical" person, I don't know a single person that uses any of their products. And I really do mean, zero . I know plenty of people that use git, IntelliJ, github, Stack Overflow, Twilio, AWS, Firebase, Google Cloud Pl…

At the end of the day, as industries mature, you can, in aggregate, segregate things into a couple of platitudes. You have those products that will absolutely require marketing and promotion to move forward, because incremental progress on a product is not enough alone to move it forward (Think of your average ICE car, how different are they nowadays really? If you take the emotion out of the equation, they're really not too different). Then there will be those that are on the cutting edge frontier, where the action and innovation happens (Again, cars, where there is a different is something like Tesla or the chevy bolt, and that requires a LOT of pure research, development, engineering etc). If you don't like one, you should probably pursue the other. There isn't as much middle ground as things mature. Financial services is another great example of this. Cutting edge privately held funds is where all the quants go because it's interesting (with some exceptions, i'm talking in aggregate), where as your JP Morgans or your Bank of Americas tend to be all about marketing (even on the various other services they provide that you don't usually see TV commercials for, or web ads, or what have you).

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#172

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 3:38 PM UTC

statictype wrote: post #127

briandear wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Anil's history of tweets, his politics, his obsession with race and just general snark. That one tweet actually did mean something "30 year old white dude." That IS the very definition of inserting race into a discussion unnecessarily. In 2012 he called me racist because I opposed Obama during the election; since I am white, automatically that made me racist, according to him. He's a jerk, at least in my opin…

That IS the very definition of inserting race into a discussion unnecessarily. I was only trying to refute the accusation that he was racist. That seemed pretty absurd. Don't have anything to say about your position. I haven't spoken to him personally.

[deleted]

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#173

Post by rickyc091 » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 3:38 PM UTC

kaosjester wrote: post #36

I read the blog post and I still have no idea what Gomix is. Is it just a web-based nodejs ide?

It's basically jsfiddle or codepen for nodejs. I have to admit, it's pretty interesting. I'm bias as I look at this from a teaching perspective and it makes it a lot simpler to just get into the meat. Looking at the code, there's a bit of magic. If you spin up the parse server it states that it requires a monogodb ENV key yet it'll just work without one. I'd imagine they are spinning up services behind the scenes.

Doesn't look like there's currently any way to add more modules. At least I haven't found it yet. Interested in testing out the import feature...

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#174

Post by yarou » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 3:38 PM UTC

anildash wrote: post #160

brianwawok wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real. Wasn't the product 90% done before he even came over? Sounds like he is taking credit.

This was a post on my personal blog about joining the company; as the official announcements make clear, one of the biggest reasons I was excited to join Fog Creek is specifically because the team was building Gomix. I'd give 100% of the credit to the team for building it.

Thanks for the lucid response. I think the tone of your responses has been way more civil than some of the other comments upthread.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#175

Post by jt2190 » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 3:39 PM UTC

GarethX wrote: post #136

chvid wrote: post #115

This mostly seems to be about a new CEO at Fog Creek. I have never heard of him but appearantly he has a big following. And it appears that a very large number of people don't like him - enough to create a bunch of new accounts here at HN just to comment on his persona. Fog Creek has to me always been about Joel on Software. And to me they always got a lot of credit and extra attention to their products because of hi…

We think it's a hugely underserved market. I've written a little about where we think Gomix fits relative to other similar products: https://medium.com/gomix/gomix-and-the-evolution-of-paas-362...

Thanks for the link.

The key paragraph for me was this one:

> The Gomix model is: just click. And in that respect, we have much in common with developer playgrounds like CodePen and JSFiddle. They too are fun for trying things out, and a nice way for developers to share ideas. But they don’t provide any ability to run back-end code, which greatly limits the types of things that you can build with them. What’s more, key features like realtime collaboration between multiple users are often limited to only paying users, putting up a barrier for educational use or simple pair-programming scenarios.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#176

Post by tomc1985 » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 3:51 PM UTC

It's a little odd to read a "programming is just so gosh darn hard" sales pitch from Fog Creek.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#177

Post by mrsmee89 » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 4:00 PM UTC

kimsk112 wrote: post #30

mrsmee89 wrote: post #17

Is there a datastore of some kind?

They do provide persistent file system. https://gomix.com/help/faqs/ "We have a persistent file system, so anything you store within your project is kept. This means you can use files as a flat file database, or save your database files locally (see our SQLite3 and NeDB examples). You can also use third-party storage services, like a hosted MongoDB database or Redis (see our MongoDB example). We recommend creating a…

Thank you. Seems kind of cumbersome though. Why wouldn't they provide one themselves.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#178

Post by dpweb » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 4:07 PM UTC

I like this alot. For brainstorming and trying out quick ideas, its a really fast way to prototype server side code, even without the remix/social features.

I'll explain why I think this product is important. Everyone knows the js dev world has fallen vicrim to the irresistable urge to abstract away and you end up with toolchain on top of toolchain.

Node and express made it possible to get an app going instantly, but now, not so instant cause you have this that and the other to install and more importantly learn how to use. For example, since Stackoverflow was mentioned, take a look there at how many people are stuck, not on js, they're confused by Angular or whatever framework was supposed to make their life easier. Simpler frameworks and simpler ways are usually pretty well received, so I view gomix as being in that spirit.

Congrats to the makers its an interesting tool.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#179

Post by GarethX » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 4:12 PM UTC

mrsmee89 wrote: post #177

kimsk112 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do provide persistent file system. https://gomix.com/help/faqs/ "We have a persistent file system, so anything you store within your project is kept. This means you can use files as a flat file database, or save your database files locally (see our SQLite3 and NeDB examples). You can also use third-party storage services, like a hosted MongoDB database or Redis (see our MongoDB example). We recommend creating a…

Thank you. Seems kind of cumbersome though. Why wouldn't they provide one themselves.

We'll be looking to add some simple to use database type functionality. We've only recently launched, so expect the product to develop over the coming months.

Re: I'm at Fog Creek, and we're introducing Gomix

#180

Post by blakeyrat » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

facorreia wrote: post #157

> to stop coding from being an exclusionary priesthood for a small few Are there really people that see it that way? For me it's just the opposite, programming is a field that is easily accessible to anyone that's interested, with a very low entry bar. Since I learned to program when I was a teenager, by reading a book about the BASIC language and taking an introductory class where I could use a microcomputer, I have…

I see it that way.

That attitude used to exist back in the 90s, with products like HyperCard, Filemaker, even Microsoft Access. There was a time when it was just expected that development software had a graphical interface builder for developers to use. (Heck, even IDEs for really difficult languages, like C++, had them.)

But "real developers" crapped all over those tools, especially Access. And when "real developers" create programming tools, they don't spend even 10 milliseconds thinking about accessibility or usability or user experience-- look at Git (created in 2005) as a perfect example. There was a time when terrible software like Git was mocked and derided, not praised.

So while back in 1998, anybody could program their own recipe database with drag&drop and a little scripting in HyperCard or Access, now in 2016 they can't. They could try perhaps in one of the "leftover" easy environments, like WinForms, but it's about an order of magnitude more difficult to learn, and if they want to share their solution with someone, they have to learn Git which is about two orders of magnitude more difficult to learn.

The world you grew up in no longer exists, and we move further from that ideal every year. Sorry, but the "high priesthood" concept (make everything difficult and annoying so we can demand more salary) won in our industry, and it won decades ago.