
Interview with creator of Nginx, Igor Sysoev - rehack
http://www.webhostingskills.com/open_source/articles/interview_with_creator_of_nginx_igor_sysoev
======
EvanMiller
Igor has been one of my programmer heroes for many years now, and I'm glad to
learn more about his background through this article. The reading's a bit
tough, as many verbs appear to be missing and a few Russian words remain
untranslated. Some interesting takeaways:

* Igor wrote Nginx while working as a sysadmin for Rambler. Classic bottom-up innovation: he could see Apache's shortcomings in a very up-close and personal way. This also explains why Rambler does not hold the copyright on Nginx (see the end of the interview).

* He is quite modest when comparing Nginx to other web servers. This reflects well on his character, but perhaps has "slowed" the adoption of Nginx. It's clear from this article that Igor is an engineer, not a salesman. I find this to be refreshing in an era when many open-source projects seem to achieve adoption by being the loudest, rather than by being the best.

* Igor put off starting a company until there was just too much work for him to do alone. I liked this quote: "I rarely change my life direction: for example, [before] Rambler, I spent seven years working for a company, [and at] Rambler, I also worked for ten years. Change is hard for me. But, nevertheless, by the spring of this year, I did finally decide to found a company that would help the further development of the project."

* Despite having U.S. investors, Nginx's engineering team is based in Russia. One interpretation is that you don't need to be in the Valley to develop a first-rate product; you just need to be in the Valley when it's time to hustle it.

Anyway, an interesting read. Apparently this article is his first public
interview. I know Igor doesn't like publicity, but it's inspiring to read his
story.

~~~
maratd
> Despite having U.S. investors, Nginx's engineering team is based in Russia.

Not only is it based in Russia, it is 100% Russian. If that doesn't scare the
shit out of you, then I already know that you're not Russian =)

> One interpretation is that you don't need to be in the Valley to develop a
> first-rate product

I'll stick with Apache HTTPD and the Apache Foundation, despite its alleged
shortcomings.

The web server is front and center in pretty much every business. I'll pass on
an outfit that sticks communist imagery into its logo.

~~~
nnq
...in what context would this make any sense?: "If that doesn't scare the shit
out of you, then I already know that you're not Russian =)"

~~~
xentronium
Strongly off-topic, but xenopatriotism is very widespread among Russians,
especially emigrants. I wouldn't like for discussion to delve into that
direction, but such opinion is often justified (obviously not now, though).

~~~
nnq
Thanks for teaching me a new word today ("xenopatriotism")... it even sounds
funny and makes me think of the Alien's xenomorphs :) On the serious side of
things, it's also helpful but maybe a bit to intense to characterize my
feelings regarding my native country, but I definitely wouldn't mix this with
judging software quality...

~~~
xentronium
I'm fairly sure that's a made up word, but I like it for its succinctness and
don't know any good synonyms.

~~~
bbotond
Every word is made up.

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arscan
Its interesting that nginx's ability to handle many connections was partially
driven by the fact that it was developed to support sites that had dialup
users. I thought it was built that way to support emerging web traffic
patterns (high volume & persistent connections), but really it was to serve an
existing (somewhat legacy) need.

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zerop
Google-translated the original article from here:
<http://habrahabr.ru/company/xakep/blog/136354/>

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fhabrahabr.ru%2Fcompany%2Fxakep%2Fblog%2F136354%2F)

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nnq
This guy is like Linus T. with the ego surgically removed ...really doesn't
try to "sell himself" ...he should start doing some corporate training classes
to teach people this skill of his.

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buster
It's a shame that the author didn't take the oportunity to mak e the answers
more readable. I read about one third of the article but found it to confusing
and difficult to read :(

~~~
golovast
You're right, my eyes were hurting from reading it. I had some time today and
banged out a better and a more readable translation.(I hope).

[http://mindend.com/index.php/interview-with-the-creator-
of-n...](http://mindend.com/index.php/interview-with-the-creator-of-nginx/)

~~~
rehack
Thanks! I had seen the translated interview on this wiki page -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sysoev>. I took the liberty of updating the
wiki page with your translation as well.

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sbt
Kudos to Sysoev and Nginx. Whenever I write C code I find myself looking at
nginx for inspiration, always keeping the source code open to see if and how
they solved similar problems. It is simply one of the best pieces of software
I have read.

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Tomis02
Learned something new today.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomizat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization)

~~~
Simucal
A few years ago I was playing around with some examples from the infamous 1996
article, "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit".

I was somewhat dismayed to find all these new fangled protections like ASLR
and Stack Protection that made executing simple buffer overflows much more
difficult! I realize that these are good things but as a student of security
it did raise the bar of difficulty for writing real-world exploits.

You need to compile your programs with the necessary flags to turn off these
protections or if that isn't an option you need to try and use various counter
measures like NOP slides, heap sprays, stack cookie replacement etc. I wish I
had been around to enjoy what seems like must have been the golden era of the
90's when writing buffer overflows was relatively easy.

~~~
emillon
> I wish I had been around to enjoy what seems like must have been the golden
> era of the 90's when writing buffer overflows was relatively easy.

There are a lot of more primitive computing devices which don't have such
protections. For example, ASLR was added to android as late as version 4.0
(2011).

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dschiptsov
Very good success story of a so-called nerd, or a _natural engineer_
mentality, or, a mildly autistic character, if we prefer a language of a
modern science.

It is from this mindset came out the marvels of engineering - first versions
of Lisp, UNIX, C and Plan9, and Erlang and designs of hardware and processors,
all the best quality engineering we could have.

It is picking and hiring this kind of people is what this site or whole
Silicone Valley is all about.

<http://karma-engineering.com/lab/wiki/Hiring>

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jfolkins
Nginx rules, but the funniest mistranslation out if this article is

"you can play with yourself in an accident"

Had me a gig-a-lin.

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Fando
Interesting Read.

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malkia
Haven't read it yet, but heard a lot of good things about nginx. Just wanted
to mention that the author has a very cool family name :)

