[HN Gopher] The Stack Fallacy (2016)
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The Stack Fallacy (2016)
Author : tomasz_wro
Score : 60 points
Date : 2021-02-18 09:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| kragen wrote:
| https://archive.fo/KsD50
| tomasz_wro wrote:
| Stack Fallacy - it seems it's easier to innovate up the stack,
| because you know the building blocks, because you own them (e.g.
| Apple doing apps). But it's actually easier to innovate down the
| stack, because you know the customer needs, because you are the
| customer (e.g. Apple doing chips).
| debarshri wrote:
| Are there examples of company who have successfully gone up the
| stack?
| froh wrote:
| Red Hat? From a mass market Linux to enterprise Linux
| maintenance to middleware (jboss) And from hardware
| enablement to virtualization to lightweight virtualization,
| cloud management and container orchestration?
| Areading314 wrote:
| Microsoft?
| compiler-guy wrote:
| As part of the commoditization of the pc, in the eighties and
| nineties, Asian pc hardware vendors went from basic
| manufacturing to simple assembly to motherboard layout to
| full system design.
|
| They basically went from subcontractors for Dell and the
| like, to almost completely replacing Dell and the line by
| moving up in the chain until Dell had very little value left
| to add.
| alex_young wrote:
| Microsoft?
|
| They started with the OS, branched to languages, added Office
| (against much better competitors), started to control the
| browser and then antitrust happened.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Actually, they started with languages, specifically BASIC,
| and then FORTRAN.
| golergka wrote:
| Also, their gaming industry story. They used to be just an
| OS that games ran on, then released one of the leading
| consoles and now are one of the major publishers and studio
| owners.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| Also some of their hardware. For example lots of people
| love their mouse. On the other hand I know people who
| hate the Surface Pro.
| lanstin wrote:
| Like Amazon going from selling books to selling compute and
| network and warehouses and shipping.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Amazon is different,as all they sell is what they learned
| throughout the years: infrastructure.then they learn more
| things and start selling solutions to those problems.
| chubot wrote:
| Hm interesting... so if you consider Google's original products
| search and ads, then Android, Chrome, ChromeBooks and other
| hardware are down the stack. Google Cloud is down the stack.
|
| YouTube is lateral, but it was an acquisition. Minor business,
| but being a DNS registrar is down the stack. So it seems that
| Google did go down mostly.
|
| I would say Apple went "up" in at least one phenomenal way.
| They started out with computers, and then 20 years later their
| big success was iPod + iTunes. iTunes is probably 2 levels up
| the stack, being mostly a media business, not really software
| even.
|
| Apple also wrote a lot of apps like Keynote, and acquired apps
| like Logic, etc.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| From it's inception Apple made technology useable.
|
| The Apple ][ was an appliance, the Mac even more so. That was
| happening during an era where a lot of computers still
| shipped in kits.
|
| The iPod was a better UX on top of existing mp3 players
| Asians OEM were making (5 buttons and a tiny liquid crystal
| screen).
|
| The iTunes store was Jobs spending an afternoon downloading
| music on the internet and figuring out he was saving less
| than minimum wage doing so.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Lots of coverage on technical aspects but what's often missing is
| the sales and marketing functions and their ability to pull the
| whole thing out of water. They mentioned Salesforce and Oracle.
| Salesforce was pushing sexy company image from day one, while
| Oracle has a reputation of a death star. Salesforce community
| screams off rooftops how great it is, while Oracles customers
| fighting their legal teams. Could more companies build successful
| CRM system? Yes, and many did, but I can't recall MS Dynamics
| fans walking out of the conferences with big smiles over their
| face as they'd just won the lottery. It's not necessary hard to
| build the product, but how it gets pushed to the market is what
| makes or breaks it. Google cloud,anyone?
| francisofascii wrote:
| "The bottleneck for success often is not knowledge of the tools,
| but lack of understanding of the customer needs."
|
| This is an issue I constantly encounter. Engineers are terrific
| problem solvers, but the problems to be solved are often not
| communicated effectively to the engineers capable to solve them.
| m463 wrote:
| better to do the right thing poorly than the wrong thing well
| snidane wrote:
| 100%
|
| except for one thing. You have to be careful about building
| things "poorly". There will always be someone who will judge
| your engineering capabilities by your "poor prototypes".
| Usually someone non technical from management or waterfall
| thinking colleagues with mindset of releasing only when it
| doesn't embarass them.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Or people whose careers have been a train of following
| behind people who built the right thing poorly, made a
| quick buck and moved on.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| Often the customer does not understand their real needs either,
| and if they don't properly understand their needs it can be
| hard to communicate to the engineers.
|
| Also, something I have had happen to me is the use of words can
| have different meanings to different people. So the customer
| can think they have clearly described their problem but the
| person listen to them may think they want something different.
| mpweiher wrote:
| That's why showing customers actual software quickly, getting
| feedback _directly_ from them and iterating rapidly on that
| feedback is so incredibly important.
| nine_k wrote:
| No need for actual software!
|
| A rather crude mock-up which shows the logic, the steps,
| the data involved, when discussed with the real prospective
| users, helps immediately find gaping voids in
| understanding, both to the developers and to the customers
| themselves. "Hmm, we never thought about it" is a rather
| frequent reaction.
|
| If somebody ever wondered what product people do, this is
| it. They _research_ the needs of the customer, and
| research, discuss, and achieve agreement on ways to solve
| them.
| aslakhellesoy wrote:
| This is exactly why I love Example Mapping.
|
| https://cucumber.io/blog/bdd/example-mapping-introduction/
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| From the site:
|
| > By continuing to browse, you consent to our use of
| cookies
|
| That's not how the GDPR works. [0] Here's an alternative
| summary. [1]
|
| [0] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-
| pecr/cookies-a...
|
| [1] https://automationpanda.com/2018/02/27/bdd-example-
| mapping/
| Person5478 wrote:
| This is exactly why I say for best results, let your engineers
| and "customers" talk directly to each other.
| AAmarkov wrote:
| The common theme when moving up the 'stack' (whether it be
| technology or academic disciplines as in the graphic) is that
| complex systems (whether OS or biology) are not just a sum of
| their parts and have emergent properties you cannot predict just
| by looking at the building blocks.
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