Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fireside Chat with Paul Graham [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 43 posts

Re: Fireside Chat with Paul Graham [video]

#21

Post by CamperBob2 »

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #20

I've always thought that Apple's horrific App Store approval process was the single biggest threat to the Apple empire. Glad to hear someone else speak out about this. It's seriously absurd that there's an arbitrarily enforced stopgate that prevents you from deploying code. It's a complete disaster. If someone could make a way to instantly deploy code to mobile phones every developer would switch in a second. The App…

Plenty of people are OK with the strict curation that the App Store's approval process represents. It's the reason why we don't have to run AV apps on our iPhones and iPads, after all.

If there's a Death Star-level weakness to the App Store, IMHO it's the app discovery process. It consistently rewards the loudest marketers rather than the best developers.

Re: Fireside Chat with Paul Graham [video]

#23

Post by jfoster »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #21
AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #20

I've always thought that Apple's horrific App Store approval process was the single biggest threat to the Apple empire. Glad to hear someone else speak out about this. It's seriously absurd that there's an arbitrarily enforced stopgate that prevents you from deploying code. It's a complete disaster. If someone could make a way to instantly deploy code to mobile phones every developer would switch in a second. The App…

Plenty of people are OK with the strict curation that the App Store's approval process represents. It's the reason why we don't have to run AV apps on our iPhones and iPads, after all. If there's a Death Star-level weakness to the App Store, IMHO it's the app discovery process. It consistently rewards the loudest marketers rather than the best developers.

"It's the reason why we don't have to run AV apps on our iPhones and iPads"

That's just not true. Android and desktop OSX are counter-examples. It is security measures like sandboxing of apps that prevent mobile devices from needing anti-virus software.

On desktop Windows, programs used to have unfettered access to the filesystem, including Windows DLLs that were major parts of the OS. Looking back, it actually seems incredible that it wasn't more of a disaster than it was.

Re: Fireside Chat with Paul Graham [video]

#24

Post by dfischer »

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #20

I've always thought that Apple's horrific App Store approval process was the single biggest threat to the Apple empire. Glad to hear someone else speak out about this. It's seriously absurd that there's an arbitrarily enforced stopgate that prevents you from deploying code. It's a complete disaster. If someone could make a way to instantly deploy code to mobile phones every developer would switch in a second. The App…

That's called the internet isn't it?! Mobile browser apps.

Re: Fireside Chat with Paul Graham [video]

#25

Post by FlaceBook »

bane wrote: post #17
alayne wrote: post #6

I wish Paul would give posting on hn another shot. I'm sure he's busy, but I always thought he had interesting perspectives even if I didn't always agree.

PG always came across to me as unusually thoughtful and smart and friendly (let's be honest he's a great guy), but never enjoyed the kind of combative debate that goes on in web forums.

> PG always came across to me as unusually thoughtful and smart and friendly (let's be honest he's a great guy)

He's also amazing and incredible and handsome and witty and strong and I love him oh so much.

Re: Fireside Chat with Paul Graham [video]

#26

Post by tectonic »

bane wrote: post #19

I really liked his idea that the users teach you about what you've made. That's a really great philosophical point. I think his comments about open source are interesting and how he's never seen anybody open source too much. I humbly disagree, I've definitely seen a few startups get nowhere because they ended up open sourcing their entire product, meaning nobody needed to pay them for anything. There needs to be a st…

What startups have you seen opensource too much?

Re: Fireside Chat with Paul Graham [video]

#27

Post by ignoramous »

bane wrote: post #19

I really liked his idea that the users teach you about what you've made. That's a really great philosophical point. I think his comments about open source are interesting and how he's never seen anybody open source too much. I humbly disagree, I've definitely seen a few startups get nowhere because they ended up open sourcing their entire product, meaning nobody needed to pay them for anything. There needs to be a st…

Re Dropbox: AFAIK, most of the magic happens in the client. The way they seamlessly integrate with different OSes seemingly as an innocuous folder that blends in with rest of the other folders is genius.

See: https://www.quora.com/Many-articles-about-Drew-Houston-say-t... and http://allthingsd.com/20120815/inside-dropboxs-reverse-engin...

Re: Fireside Chat with Paul Graham [video]

#28

Post by CamperBob2 »

jfoster wrote: post #23
CamperBob2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people are OK with the strict curation that the App Store's approval process represents. It's the reason why we don't have to run AV apps on our iPhones and iPads, after all. If there's a Death Star-level weakness to the App Store, IMHO it's the app discovery process. It consistently rewards the loudest marketers rather than the best developers.

"It's the reason why we don't have to run AV apps on our iPhones and iPads" That's just not true. Android and desktop OSX are counter-examples. It is security measures like sandboxing of apps that prevent mobile devices from needing anti-virus software. On desktop Windows, programs used to have unfettered access to the filesystem, including Windows DLLs that were major parts of the OS. Looking back, it actually seems…

There has been enough nastyware on Android platforms to at least somewhat justify Apple's approach. Sandboxes have a way of springing leaks.

I was 100% on the opposite side of this debate when the iOS SDK first became available. (This was what I had to say about their limitations at the time, if it lends me any street cred: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVkqbycvuKw ).

But at this point the restrictions I objected to have mostly been lifted, to the point where they don't interfere with the vast majority of developers who aren't looking to do something slimy. It's very nice to be able to download and install apps without having to wonder what the developer's real agenda is.

Re: Fireside Chat with Paul Graham [video]

#29

Post by bane »

tectonic wrote: post #26
bane wrote: post #19

I really liked his idea that the users teach you about what you've made. That's a really great philosophical point. I think his comments about open source are interesting and how he's never seen anybody open source too much. I humbly disagree, I've definitely seen a few startups get nowhere because they ended up open sourcing their entire product, meaning nobody needed to pay them for anything. There needs to be a st…

What startups have you seen opensource too much?

There was an enterprise cloud company I once worked with. They had built a layer on top of HDFS and some nice admin tools to go along with it.

Their customers hired them to build out systems that would provide in-house clouds and their tooling helped make HDFS deployment, management and integration a bit easier.

They decided to open source all of their software at some point which meant their model went from:

- Provide tools to make deploying HDFS better, this was their secret sauce

- Provide services to setup/manage all of this

to

- Provide services to setup/manage all of this

Since everything else in their stack was open-source also, their secret sauce consisted of just being a group of engineers, which isn't much of a secret sauce, except they thought it was because "our guys know the ecosystem and tooling we developed" and so charged more for those service engagements.

Their customers realized this, hired cheaper groups of engineers (some of who included previous employees) who then worked with the now free and open sourced tools that "somebody" else had now spent VC money building instead of them.

Inside of a year or so they turned from a successful and growing concern into a VC investment black-hole and closed up shop.

The tooling and many-man-years of effort that went into developing it all was what the business was about and they simply opened it all up to the world, who then just downloaded it and replaced them.

Re: Fireside Chat with Paul Graham [video]

#30

Post by tectonic »

bane wrote: post #29
tectonic wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What startups have you seen opensource too much?

There was an enterprise cloud company I once worked with. They had built a layer on top of HDFS and some nice admin tools to go along with it. Their customers hired them to build out systems that would provide in-house clouds and their tooling helped make HDFS deployment, management and integration a bit easier. They decided to open source all of their software at some point which meant their model went from: - Provi…

Interesting, thanks!
Post reply on HN