Goodbye Joyent
It’s kind of risky to have programmers who feel so passionately opinionated about the software that should power a business.It’s doubly tricky, because most companies pay lip service to passion. But like a chef that cares a bit too much about which cookware you use, it sometimes hinders the goal of serving 100 customers at noon.I respect that they’ve created their entire networking stack from the ground up. Few can claim the same. But objectively, the less eyeballs on a piece of code, the more risk. What will the company do if they’re hit by a bus?I’m not sure that companies should be measured in terms of “what if a dev suddenly goes away,” since creative work isn’t interchangeable like gears in a machine (nor would we want it to be). But it seems at least partly relevant.The tradeoff is that if you use unpopular software, like lisp, you can often gain more leverage in specific situations. HN’s software is the most flexible codebase I’ve ever seen, but few have ever studied it deeply. Viaweb used those principles to dominate the competition at a time when everybody was writing websites in C. But are those days gone?It might be an asset for a startup to use obscure software, so it’s definitely worth honing the skillset. I’m just not sure it’s a good idea to feel so strongly about business in particular. It has a way of burning you.