Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#201

Post by n_are_q » Sun, Mar 27, 2011, 2:11 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #192

n_are_q wrote: post #95

I worked at MySpace, specifically the middle tier where these technical issues supposedly existed (scalability), although I also worked on a number of user and non-user facing projects during my time there. You may consider me biased because of that, but I'd say I also have a pretty good view into the issue. The reason for MySpace's downfall is crystal clear to anyone who worked at the company and cared to look aroun…

The original article mentions you didn't have version control or staging servers. You didn't mention that claim. Is it true?

That's definitely false. We've had Microsoft's TFS as the source control system when I started working there about 4-5 years ago (I no longer work at ms). We also had two levels of stage servers, several for the dev code branch, and a couple for the prod branch. Eventually each team had their own set of stage servers. Stage servers were crucial since some parts of the infrastructure were not testable in dev, so to say we didn't have any is to not be at all familiar with ms's development setup.

BTW, I'm not normally this animated with my comments, but the article was so full of such baseless conjecture I as truly appalled. I actually had a good deal respect for Scoble prior to reading that. MS had a ton of problems, but it definitely had a number of great people working on technology and doing a pretty good job at it - otherwise we would have been friendster.

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#202

Post by kragen » Sun, Mar 27, 2011, 2:55 AM UTC

strlen wrote: post #198

kragen wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, there were some shorthands in my post. Let me expand. If someone cracks your developer's development workstation, they can piggyback on that developer's access in order to insert malicious code into a commit, or in order to ssh into a production server and run a canned exploit of a local-root vulnerability. The first of the two leaves a strong audit trail, and may require a third party to sign off on it before…

How is getting onto a developer's workstation more difficult than on an operation engineer's workstation? If you don't allow developers to do some operational duties, this also means having to have more operations staff (which typically will have higher privileges than developers, anyway). You are also forgetting that there is usually a step between a developer workstation and production, and at that gateway you'll t…

Concur.

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#203

Post by nrkn » Mon, Mar 28, 2011, 8:15 PM UTC

chrito wrote: post #162

(former MySpace and former .NET team @MSFT) Let's just say the Microsoft stack probably didn't kill the beast… ASP.NET certainly didn't help though. It's too bad that all the tech built around .NET will be lost to the annals of MySpace, MSFT should acquire the company just to open source the whole thing for the benefit of .NET. Regardless, it's fair to say starting a company on "the Microsoft Stack" today would refle…

Try telling Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood that.

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#204

Post by ms_bitshifter » Fri, Apr 01, 2011, 7:04 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #190

jdavid wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ex-MySpace ID MDP employee we had staging servers. There were like 2 or 3 different levels of test, of course, that might have been unique to our team.

Did you have version control? That's the most damning accusation to me.

I don't even get where that accusation is coming from? Everything was versioned prior to building out, rather than allowing devs to drop dll's wherever they felt like it. Sure the local dev environment wasn't the best...

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#205

Post by erraggy » Fri, Apr 01, 2011, 8:44 PM UTC

lemmsjid wrote: post #100

As someone who was fairly intimately involved in the entire evolution of the MySpace stack, I'm dumbfounded at the number of inaccuracies in this article (actually, it's hard to call them inaccuracies so much as an exercise in "I'm going to write an article based on some stuff I heard from disgruntled people."). I developed in non-Microsoft technologies before and after MySpace, and I can tell you that, like all tech…

To keep this comment in context to those whom have reached this comment on its own...

Article being discussed: http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/3/25/did-the-microsoft-...

HackerNews Link this is a comment from: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2369343

I have no idea why HackerNews has no context links built-in to their comment pages. O_o

Re: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace?

#206

Post by erraggy » Fri, Apr 01, 2011, 8:46 PM UTC

erraggy wrote: post #205

lemmsjid wrote: post #100

As someone who was fairly intimately involved in the entire evolution of the MySpace stack, I'm dumbfounded at the number of inaccuracies in this article (actually, it's hard to call them inaccuracies so much as an exercise in "I'm going to write an article based on some stuff I heard from disgruntled people."). I developed in non-Microsoft technologies before and after MySpace, and I can tell you that, like all tech…

To keep this comment in context to those whom have reached this comment on its own... Article being discussed: http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/3/25/did-the-microsoft-... HackerNews Link this is a comment from: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2369343 I have no idea why HackerNews has no context links built-in to their comment pages. O_o

duh on my part. there is a link named "parent" following the permalink at the top. Sorry...