
Was Joel wrong? - spicavigo
I read the Architecture astronauts article by Joel Spolsky again recently (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.joelonsoftware.com&#x2F;items&#x2F;2008&#x2F;05&#x2F;01.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.joelonsoftware.com&#x2F;items&#x2F;2008&#x2F;05&#x2F;01.html</a>). In it he mentions the various &quot;File Synchronization&quot; platforms and says &quot;Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application.&quot;<p>With the massive success of Dropbox and the way Box.com is getting the mindshare amongst users, would it be right to say &quot;Joel, you got it wrong&quot;?
======
ryanbrunner
I'd say he got the broader point right.

Prior to DropBox, no one did care about file synchronization, because the
solutions presented thus far _were_ largely "architecture astronaut"
solutions. Rather than providing a simple, straightforward way to synchronize
files (such as what DropBox provided), technologies like Hailstorm always
focused on way too broad a feature set - it wasn't about "your files are
always available", it was about pervasive cloud architectures that
revolutionized the way you use your computer.

It wasn't until DropBox simplified the problem to "put files in this folder,
and then they're synched" that file synchronization tools took off in any
significant way.

Joel isn't complaining about file synchronization per se, he's arguing that
the Microsoft approach of attempting to revolutionize computing every year
with yet another failed omnipresent platform.

~~~
smurph
Many of the attempts that had been made, especially at Microsoft, were also
just new versions of existing apps with some kind of syncing built in and a
higher price. Office Groove is an example. Office doesn't need to have a
DropBox built into it, it just needs to be Office. But if you've got an
architecture astronaut in charge of the project, then they are going to want
to use the position to build a reputation for being an innovator rather than
just getting things done.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
So is architecture astronaut a perojative that we can just fling at people who
come up with innovative features when really we want office 2013 to be the
same as office 2011 and so on?

What's the point of revving office if there is no innovation allowed?

~~~
jerf
I believe the key sentence was "Office doesn't need to have a DropBox built
into it, it just needs to be Office."

Embeddeing a featureless chunk of DropBox in Office that only works in Office
that only works on Office files is the opposite of innovation, where you have
a great idea but can only see it through the lens of your existing interests.
Pulling features that don't belong in Office into Office isn't innovation,
it's just poor product management.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It's still there in skydrive pro. Sometimes the idea is ok, the realization
just takes awhile. Sharing documents in office is something that the
enterprise users want to do even if we don't get it.

------
moron4hire
I think Joel's larger point is that most programmers are actually arrogant
assholes who aren't as good as they think they are, so when they start these
massive, architecturally complex projects, they get themselves in way over
their heads and it ultimately fails. Actually-good programmers are humble
enough to not try to arbitrarily force their white-whale architectures on
their project mates and can engage in much more reasoned discussion that
results in appropriate, incremental change.

Incidentally, that's what my handle is about: I remind myself everyday I'm
just a moron who puts his britches on one leg at a time like everyone else.
It's helped me stop caring about code and start caring about my customers'
needs. The code I write is what is necessary and sufficient for the task at
hand, and as soon as it is no longer necessary or sufficient, it gets deleted
or augmented without argument.

And I do catch myself, "but I like this code", and I remember the handle.
"Just a moron for hire". Yep, delete the code, it's nothing.

I've had people on message boards reply, "it's hard to take you seriously with
your name...". Yeah, no shit. Quit taking people on the Internets so
seriously, mostly because they have no impact on your life and you shouldn't
let them rise to the level of giving a shit about them.

------
jokoon
Depends on how you sync it. bt sync is really awesome, and i'm really waiting
to see all computing done in p2p, which is not the same thing than in "the
cloud". The cloud is still centralized so that they can control the content in
some way.

I really wish I could have the skill, time and motivation to work on p2p techs
like the ones bittorrent is working on. But defining what you want to do on
p2p is really hard and is unexplored.

Every geek nerd investor/programmer you-name-it will join the current
mainstream herd and tell you to make facebook apps, iphone apps, android apps,
and advise you to auth your blog comments with twitter or openid.

I don't know what this joel guy is always saying that can attract so much
attention, all I know is that I want to bury the web2.0 remains into the
ground, forget about internet browsers and focus on sharing mechanisms that
actually work. The web was designed to make static pages, not dynamic pages.
So please, kill that SPDY thing right now, close those huge, innefficient data
centers and try to work on decentralized techs.

The web currently works in a centralized fashion, so there is no way
developers can join in and add value. Facebook is a fortress.

And if the CIA knocks and tells you they need to monitor your stuff, let them
do it. Nobody really cares except journalists, who are professionnals.

I know it sounds unreal, but I'm so convinced people could share more
information if the platforms were not owned and regulated by websites, but
instead by people, even if there is are security and spamming risks. I'll
sound crazy but the internet has always been an opportunity to have a better
local economy, and that's a shame it's not happening.

~~~
ucee054
The bandwidth in the centre of the network is way higher than the bandwidth in
the access network, because to increase the bandwidth in the access network
you have to do very expensive stuff like digging up the road to lay optical
fibres.

Result: The internet will _always_ be centralized. Deal with it.

~~~
jokoon
First, you're talking about websites, which will always require bandwidth. Why
? Because websites are narcissistic, expensive, and not designed for a dynamic
experience. Websites are synchronous: the server generates a 500kB text blob
file each time you want to communicate, it's zipped, unzipped, and parsed
again, it's totally inefficient. Why ? because a webpage is just a string
blob.

I live in france, and here, youtube is barely usable anymore, because
everybody uses it. Streaming sucks, because video on demand is the worst
pitfall of the internet architecture.

Websites are great for static pages. It's also great to advertise things,
because html is easy, and quickly doable. But for other things, I don't
believe it's really worth it. I dare you to find a html5, lightweight internet
browser that can do optimized javascript, for what, checking your gmail, and
connect to the facebook server farm? Why not using a mail application instead
? And then come up with SPDY, which is not so fast anyway.

Not everybody wants websites. People also like to share files, do video
conferences, which are not possible with a centralized network, or really
painful and expensive. Think about skype and bittorrent.

Those are economic alternatives because access network are not only expensive,
they're not technologically viable.

Saying p2p is not viable because it is slow is a joke, because the way we use
the network to make websites is already slow and require tremendous amounts of
bandwidth. You're comparing airplanes and bicycles.

~~~
ucee054
Let's say you want to send a multimedia collection from your co-lo to someone
in a different continent, via a relay.

You might be able to relay it via (someone like) me, because I get megabits
per second download, but I get much less upload, so your target is in for a
tedious wait.

But, if you send it via Amazon web services, you might be able to direct
connect to their hosting centre near you. From there, you could get a gigabit
per second over Amazon's own network to a centre near your target where he/she
can download from - instantaneous.

And we're not even talking about Amazon's datacentre internal networks, where
you might be able to arrange for 10 gigabits.

Centralized beats decentralized by orders of magnitude. Sorry.

~~~
jokoon
> multimedia collection

How many people really want to do that ? You just better send it through mail
honestly.

Most people care about text data, which is very small if you handle it well.

~~~
ucee054
How many? I don't know, but I _do_ know that Grandma wants to send the photos
from last night's birthday party to Aunt Tillie back in the old country. And
neither is on bittorrent.

I think the mistake you are making is that you think "most people" = you,
whereas in reality "most people" = Grandma.

If you are the guy responsible for building some internet service for Grandma
to use, you will _always_ go centralized, because that's where the bandwidth
is.

p2p only wins in some weird edge cases - in file sharing it's in part not to
enable copyright holders to shut the system down through legal action against
single points of failure.

~~~
jokoon
> I think the mistake you are making is that you think "most people" = you,
> whereas in reality "most people" = Grandma.

I'm trying to make you understand p2p techs can go mainstream, I'm not trying
to argue about making a tech only for tech aware people. Bittorrent is already
used in a mainstream way. Please don't argue about a tech that appears too
complex it can't suit old people. Very few people understand kernels, yet many
use computers everyday without minding.

With that mindset, p2p will never become mainstream. If you want innovation to
suit 95% of what people want, you're screwed, because people don't know what
technologies can do for them. Sometimes you should let engineers or tech-savvy
marketers propose a little more that what people will always want to try.
There are many people out there who like to be surprised with technologies,
and that's also a market.

~~~
ucee054
Look, I have actually _studied_ p2p. I'm sure you have _not_. I doubt, for
example, that you could quote off-the-top-of-your-head the research papers
relevant to p2p.

If you _had_ done your homework, you'd realize that p2p has been around since
the nineties, and its only successes have been some weird military-type
applications, file sharing, file distribution and Skype.

So p2p is not a new, superior paradigm about to burst into the mainstream,
only being held back because of Moaning Minnies like me not pushing it hard
enough.

It is actually an old, tired, second-hand, _inferior_ technology that has been
_failing_ to go mainstream _for twenty years_.

"Please don't argue about a tech that appears too complex it can't suit old
people"

You actually have to _read_ what I wrote.

Part 1: I explained to you _how_ technology is deployed to suit people who
can't deal with complexity: an engineer builds it into a product/service for
them - making the service simple enough to use.

Part 2: I explained to you _why_ said engineer would _never_ use p2p for said
service: because all the bandwidth is available in the centre.

You know, to make a p2p system that can even approach the _ballpark_
performance of a centralized system, you have to deal with connection
asymmetry, connection heterogeneity, overlay construction and churn tolerance.
You'll have a devil of a time just _deploying and testing_ the fucking thing,
forget about development. And you _still_ get a _less_ performant system
overall.

The tech doesn't "appear" complex, it _IS_ complex. For Grandma to be able to
use it, the poor sods in Engineering have to make it "appear" simple, _which
makes the complexity THEIR problem_.

This is _NOT_ something any sane engineer would want if he could avoid it by
getting Grandma what she wants by using a simpler alternative. Like a central
server, for example.

~~~
jokoon
> ballpark performance of a centralized system

Performance in this case is overrated. You forget people want to have
independent system which can't be shut down or controlled, that's the point of
a network.

> You'll have a devil of a time just deploying and testing the fucking thing,
> forget about development.

Who cares about that ? Engineering is about results, not ease of work. Once
you get results in engineering, you have them for life. Business wants easy
solution, that's understandable, but the engineer's job is also to bring new
products not done before. Consumers and businessmen rarely or never know about
what can be done.

> This is NOT something any sane engineer would want if he could avoid it by
> getting Grandma what she wants by using a simpler alternative.

If the "simpler alternative" is now the majority, I can't understand how you
can call this an alternative. At the beginning, networking was designed as in
anybody can send to anybody. Most of the time engineers deliver solution to
problems people are complaining about, but sometimes there are inherent
problems only the engineers are aware of, in which the solution can actually
create true value.

~~~
ucee054
_that's the point of a network._

Wrong. The point of the network is to transmit data.

 _Who cares about that ?_

Who cares about most efficiently getting to systems that work? Grandma, Aunt
Tillie, the engineer, his boss that pays his salary, his boss's boss, his
boss's boss's investor, and everyone else who matters.

Who cares about p2p? You and a couple of other people who don't matter, don't
pay anyone's salary and don't get to decide anything.

You sound like a teenager. Maybe you should try to learn how technology
decisions are taken in real life. You could start by getting a job in a
technology company, but first here is a reading list for you:

[http://soloway.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/46715502/Crossing-
Th...](http://soloway.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/46715502/Crossing-The-
Chasm.pdf)

<http://archive.org/details/TheInnovatorDilemma>

<http://it-ebooks.info/book/166/>

<http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html>

<http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/PatternsOfSoftware.pdf>

~~~
jokoon
> Wrong. The point of the network is to transmit data.

Data is mostly transmitted one way with those access network you're talking
about. It makes me think of a tv or radio or cable network. That's the reason
p2p does not attract anyone, because the current network is designed for
people to focus on download instead, because that's the simplest software
model. It only consists of supplying data to the consumer, like watching a tv
channel. Internet is a mesh network first. That's how data flows.

> Who cares about most efficiently getting to systems that work? Grandma, Aunt
> Tillie, the engineer, his boss that pays his salary, his boss's boss, his
> boss's boss's investor, and everyone else who matters.

I was talking about product research. Technology does not invent itself. The
boss you're talking about had no clue he could sell those things, and he did.
I'm talking about lab rats, the people you fuel and inspire to make new stuff,
not just use technologies in a way that has been done and done again. Facebook
is already using the mesh paradigm for friend, but it requires a very high
amount of computing power, and only facebook can access the data the way they
want. That's a waste of good data. Other than that, facebook has brought zero
new things to the internet. And it should not stop there.

> Who cares about p2p? You and a couple of other people who don't matter,
> don't pay anyone's salary and don't get to decide anything.

>You sound like a teenager. Maybe you should try to learn how technology
decisions are taken in real life. You could start by getting a job in a
technology company, but first here is a reading list for you:

Yes, I don't have a phd, I don't have a well paid job at a silicon valley
company, so that's the #1 reason I'm wrong. I mean everything's its right
place, why are there websites to talk about stuff, right. Let's just watch
what nerds are cooking, and when it's sellable and usable, buy it and never
modify it again, and lock it.

No surprise there was a net bubble.

~~~
ucee054
_I was talking about product research._

No you weren't! You were talking about the later stage: "going mainstream",
which means efficiency, testing and deployment. But when I mentioned testing
and deployment, you said _Who cares about that?_

 _that's the #1 reason I'm wrong_

The reasons why you are wrong are contained in the damn links I went to the
trouble of assembling for you. Why don't you go read them and _learn
something_ , instead of hitting me with a comeback? Sheesh.

~~~
jokoon
> You'll have a devil of a time just deploying and testing the fucking thing,
> forget about development.

That's what you said.

When I said "Who cares about that ? Engineering is about results, not ease of
work.", I was answering about "devil of a time".

> The reasons why you are wrong are contained in the damn links I went to the
> trouble of assembling for you.

The links you talk about might have to do with the IT business and how things
go down between engineers, investors and managers. This is such an ugly topic,
I don't even want to even try to talk about it. It's just not interesting. You
don't go forward innovation by asking marketers and consumers. Marketing is
about how you sell stuff, not what you actually sell.

That's what I hate about business in general. Business wants to do stuff, but
it has no idea what to do. That's the reason the soviets were the first to
send sputnik and a man on the moon. The US just followed. That's how
innovation is broken. But that's just another topic.

I could not let you tell me that "things are good the way they are, because if
they're like that, it's because we explored the business of it, and that's
what we found out."

~~~
ucee054
I didn't tell you things are _good_ the way they are, I told you that the
internet will _always_ be centralized and p2p will never go mainstream.

 _You don't go forward innovation_

Innovation is _irrelevant_ to p2p because p2p has already been invented.
Nobody _wants_ it, and nobody has wanted it _for 20 years_ , that's its
problem.

 _This is such an ugly topic, I don't even want to even try to talk about it.
It's just not interesting._

That uninteresting ugliness decides which technologies go mainstream and which
ones fail. If you want to stick your head in the sand, this conversation is
over.

~~~
jokoon
> I told you that the internet will always be centralized and p2p will never
> go mainstream.

You seem confident about the future. I already read stats that p2p is actually
quite a big chunk of the internet traffic. I never said "bring the internet
full p2p", I just meant that p2p can play a role in what facebook, forums, and
mail techs are already doing. p2p is not just for file sharing, file sharing
is the easiest part of p2p.

> Innovation is irrelevant to p2p because p2p has already been invented.

p2p only work with protocols, and there aren't many protocols around people
can actually use. There's a difference between invention and having a working
standard.

And what does 'invented' really means here ? You don't just invent
technologies, p2p is a very broad concept, you need to precisely define how
users can make use of a protocol, what is the purpose of a particular
protocol, what are the security and abuse issues, what sort of resource can be
saved by using it, etc.

> if you want to stick your head in the sand, this conversation is over.

I don't want to stick my head in the sand, I'm just quite disappointed about
how investors play ball with lab rats. That's how I feel IT and research
business is done. Look at tesla motors, I'm sure Musk is one of the few
investors who is not saying "fuck you with your nerd fantasies", and who is
actually trying to change the industry.

------
qompiler
Just because someone is a professional online ranter it doesn't mean they are
always right.

~~~
gnoway
Likewise, just because some people (a lot of people?) like dropbox et al.,
that doesn't mean it's revolutionary or killer or whatever. It just means a
lot of people like it.

I have a basic understanding of what dropbox is. I've never used it. Never
even been to their website. I don't care about synchronizing files. I suspect
I'm not in the minority.

~~~
edtechdev
They have over 100 million users, and then of course there is Google Drive,
Microsoft Skydrive, etc. I've convinced several non-techie folks to use
Dropbox once they realize it replaces the need for flash drives (which of
course can get lost). So it's not so much "file synchronization" that was the
killer app for some, but rather "accessing and storing/backing up files in the
cloud."

~~~
nijk
<http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx_mobile.html>

100 million account (including me)

4 million paying customers.

Which means, almost none of MS's customers.

------
hdra
I would simply agreed with the article if I read it at that time.

On the topic, seems like Microsoft produced quite a lot of products that
simply ahead of its time. Some of the product pitch and description quoted in
the article may sounds stupid at the time, but now, it is simply is a
necessity.

------
jorgeleo
In other news, we have recently discover that all tech gurus are human too,
hence fallible

We martians are infallible, and we are very surprised at this human weakness

------
orclev
I really like Joel, I think he has some very worthwhile articles to his name.
That said, he's probably more often wrong than he is right and I disagree with
him on many points regularly. Even when he's wrong though he's still worth
reading because usually you'll find a few nuggets of wisdom buried in there
even if the broad picture is wrong, or as in this case if it's the other way
around.

------
archangel_one
Strictly, I don't think he did; Dropbox is a big thing but it is not a "killer
application" as I'd define it, ie. an application that people would buy a
particular platform just to get. In the way that, say, Office is for Windows,
or Halo might be for Xbox (or so I hear).

Of course, it's kind of irrelevant to Dropbox; they don't have a horse in the
platform race, so they're supporting all the major ones and doing very well,
but they're not a killer app for any one of them. I don't think that proves
that it couldn't ever have been a killer app, but it looks unlikely now that
it'll be the case.

------
brudgers
_We make the future in the same way: We extrapolate as much as we can, and
whenever we run out of imagination, we just shovel the present into the holes.
That's why our pictures of the future always seem to resemble the present,
only more so. -- Corey Doctorow_ [1]

Dropbox just happens to be a part of the future Spolsky didn't invent. Then
again, neither did Alan Kay.

[1] [http://www.informationweek.com/how-hollywood-congress-and-
dr...](http://www.informationweek.com/how-hollywood-congress-and-drm-are-
beati/199903173)

------
lnanek2
I wonder how many people use Dropbox for sync amongst multiple devices. For me
it is mainly backup and sharing from my laptop.

~~~
orclev
I use it to synch files between my Windows gaming desktop, my Windows and OS X
work laptops, and my personal Linux laptop, plus access from my phone... so
that's 5 devices right there. So there's at least one data point right there.

------
jaynate
"file synchronization is just not a killer application"

...is still true. Solving for the problems of not having having my files when
I need them, on any device I'm using and without having to map drives and deal
with complex, technical setup IS a killer application.

Customer experience and usability changes everything.

------
jister
Did you read the date of the article?

~~~
spicavigo
Of course. Hence the title says "Was" and not "Is"

~~~
nijk
He wasn't wrong then. The world has changed. A user has far more computers now
than she had then.

------
krschultz
Why does this matter? Who cares?

------
michaelochurch
Well, everyone is Wrong sometimes, so let's talk about Wrongulence, which is
the matter of whether a person is consistently Wrong. Technically speaking,
there's a lot of Wrongness on the Internet not because there is something
wrong with the Internet, but because of the persisting Wrongulence of people
who use it.

Back in 2008 I applied to Fog Creek and was rejected. I turned out to be
awesome, not that one would have known that 5 years ago, because at the time I
was a n00b with a capital zero and wrongulent about many technical things
myself.

Add this to a noninformative prior of Beta(1, 1) and we get a posterior of
Beta(1, 2) on the Wrongulence distribution.

If we interpret x < 0.5 as "Not Wrongulent" and x > 0.5 as "Wrongulent" then
we get a 95-percent confidence interval of...

    
    
        [Not Wrongulent, Wrongulent]
    

Conclusion: hell if I know.

~~~
oinksoft
Pardon my language, but do we have to get this narcissistic shit from you in
every thread? I know the "I'm awesome" stuff is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek
and all, but still ...

~~~
beedogs
Seriously. I avoid technical discussions on reddit because they're inevitably
full of comments like the parent comment. It's disheartening to see them here
now too.

~~~
michaelochurch
I was making fun of the OP for the open-ended question. I thought that was
more clear, but some people have a hard time with subtle tea.

