[HN Gopher] Fastly acquires Glitch
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Fastly acquires Glitch
Author : 0xedb
Score : 158 points
Date : 2022-05-19 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fastly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fastly.com)
| dawkins wrote:
| What an amazing track record from Joel Spolsky: Launched Fog
| Creek, then StackOverflow, Trello and now Glitch (which I think
| is the successor of Fog Creek)
| thom wrote:
| I know this is wrong, but I also think patio11 is somewhat a
| product of the Business of Software forum (that in many ways is
| a precursor to this place) so extremely indirectly I credit
| Joel with still seeing Patrick on my timeline regularly.
| patio11 wrote:
| Feel free to upgrade that to a very, very direct influence.
| In 2010 after I quit being a salaryman I wanted nothing other
| than to go into semi-retirement on Bingo Card Creator ("sip
| iced cocoa and play video games all day").
|
| A long-ranging conversation with Joel on, among other things,
| confluence of Catholic theology and the Talmud plus the
| memorable phrase "Shouldn't you apply your skills to
| something which isn't totally bullshit?" caused me to have a
| sharp reassessment of life and career goals, but for which it
| is unlikely I would have made a serious go of my consultancy,
| successfully launched my following few companies, or
| continued writing at anything like pace observed over the
| interval.
| jgable wrote:
| and Patrick, I can say that you were the first heavy
| influence on me that pushed me in the direction of solo
| entrepreneurship. From your writings and podcast I found
| Brennan Dunn, Amy Hoy, Jonathan Stark, Philip Morgan and
| others who have inspired me to choose and pursue my own
| path. Thanks for all that you've done, and I aspire to
| leave the kind of mark on the world that you have left.
| blinkymach12 wrote:
| Fog Creek renamed to Glitch as we transitioned from being a
| bootstrapped product-incubation lifestyle company to a single-
| product VC-backed startup. I think of the Fog Creek storybook
| closing with that rename, since Glitch always had a very
| different business focus, but technically (and perhaps
| culturally) they're of the same lineage.
|
| In other Joel track record exploits, he's also our co-founder
| over at HASH.ai [1] and a driving force behind the Block
| Protocol [2][3]
|
| [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2020/06/18/hash-a-free-
| online... [2] https://blockprotocol.org/ [3]
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2022/01/27/making-the-web-bet...
| cheeze wrote:
| hash.ai and the "block protocol" sound like crypto shams.
| Nice to see something different, although I feel like the
| branding really, really makes it seem like crypto.
| kixiQu wrote:
| I really hope this works out well for the Glitch userbase. I'm
| always nudging people towards it because I don't know anything
| else that makes it as easy to get started with a flexible web
| project without having to learn The Boring Stuff.
| john-doe wrote:
| Bye-bye Glitch union.
| advisedwang wrote:
| The case law is that the "successor" company in an acquisition
| is still held by all the same union obligations as before an
| acquisition [1]. So the folks in the Glitch union keep their
| bargaining unit and keep their contract.
|
| Many union contracts also have an explicit "successor clause"
| too, although I don't know about the Glitch union contract.
|
| [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-
| law/ba...
| [deleted]
| cheath wrote:
| It was dissolved already. Source:
| https://twitter.com/keithkurson/status/1527310014771130373
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| Bird-brained move.
|
| Things have been good pre-acquisition, so let's dissolve the
| union immediately before we get new management. Fellow
| techies I beg you: stop being so gullible!
| cheath wrote:
| I doubt the acquisition would have happened with the union
| intact. for Fastly in their diligence, that would likely be
| a dealbreaker. And I don't know the dynamics of the deal
| and where Glitch was with other options, but that could
| have very well spelled the end of the company.
| [deleted]
| funOtter wrote:
| I was using Glitch before they renamed it to Glitch - does anyone
| remember that name? I can't remember and can't find it on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(company)
| omegadeep10 wrote:
| Gomix I believe. https://blog.glitch.com/post/welcome-to-glitch
| funOtter wrote:
| I think "HyperDev" actually - just found it:
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/05/31/introducing-
| hyperd...
| blinkymach12 wrote:
| - HyperWeb [ Internal project name for first ~year ]
|
| - HyperDev [ First public branding / early launch ]
|
| - GoMix [ First major relaunch, now with Anil as CEO ]
|
| - Glitch [ After acquiring the sweet glitch.com domain from
| the kind folks at Slack ]
|
| Source: I helped work on it
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Oh cool, I didn't know Glitch actually worked with Slack to
| get the name. I miss that stupid game.
| michaelwilson wrote:
| Well, at the risk of your productivity:
| https://www.oddgiants.com/
|
| It's in "Alpha" and works pretty well.
|
| Enjoy!
| shireboy wrote:
| I've been using Glitch since it was HyperDev and love it. My main
| use cases are: 1) learning various frameworks without installing
| cruft on my dev laptop and 2) small personal or side projects
| where I need a little hosting but not full AWS/Azure account. It
| really scratches an itch. Zero friction to just set up and run. I
| even set up a simple CI so that I develop on a "dev project", but
| then can push the code to a demo or production project. Great
| product.
| kfarr wrote:
| I dearly love Glitch for k-12 education use cases. My only
| consistent complaint after all these years is the slow speed,
| especially "waking up" apps. Hoping this acquisition will result
| in continued investment to speed up the platform!
| hackermondev wrote:
| replit better
| xwdv wrote:
| Can't believe it. Fastly itself seems like such an acquisition
| target right now for some bigger player. Maybe Cloudflare.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| I would think one of cloud vendors would gobble them up but
| maybe internal opposition is too strong
| xwdv wrote:
| Cloudflare is a fledgling cloud vendor.
| babelfish wrote:
| What are some Fastly features that Cloudflare doesn't
| already have? Why would they be an acquisition target?
| nosequel wrote:
| Features that Fastly has that CF does not (or are better
| on Fastly) - Compute@Edge is a far
| better product than CF Workers. I think CF is catching
| up, but right now Fastly is ahead. - Video.
| Fastly's streaming video offering is so much better than
| CF. - Large file support (ex: +200gb game
| downloads), unless it was added recently CF is more
| limited on file size that can be cached effectively.
| - Morals. Fastly has morals, CF is severely lacking. I
| don't know if this one could be "acquired" though.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Their numbers are not "fledgling", what's your metric?
| xwdv wrote:
| Post your numbers.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| They had 200M of revenue last q after what like 13 years
| in business ? Maybe I'm spoiled but doesn't seem exactly
| the behemoth that hn frequently makes it out to be
| compared to big three
| broner wrote:
| Glitch? Oh they're with Fastly now!
| https://www.tiktok.com/@benedicttown/video/70983764223009620...
| cagenut wrote:
| This is a very cool combo I'm excited to use. The glitch in-
| browser IDE combined with fastly's wasm-hosting-at-the-edge means
| you can whip up a quick front end without ever having to fight
| with a terminal. Dramatically lower barrier to entry and
| reduction of scut-work.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Does anyone know for how much?
| nycdatasci wrote:
| Terms haven't been disclosed.
| jitl wrote:
| It seems like the CDN companies are suddenly(1) becoming App
| Platforms in a big way. "Computing at the edge" is going from
| expensive, meme AWS re:Invent buzzword to fun and easy -- with no
| AWS in sight. I hope this deal works out well for the Glitch
| employees!
|
| 1: I know it's been years in the making, but I'm still slinging
| Docker containers in a single AWS region.
| chadlavi wrote:
| I doubt it's going to be a payday for glitch employees stock-
| wise, but hopefully fastly is a good place for them to work.
| [deleted]
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| onmobile2022 wrote:
| Not going by their Glassdoor reviews. I know it is not a
| reliable source and its incentives are all wrong, but I've
| never seen a more damning set of reviews for any tech company
| wantsanagent wrote:
| I've just read through several pages of reviews and while
| there are criticisms and red flags it does not rise to the
| level of 'most damning reviews of any tech company' that
| you imply.
| mosquitobite wrote:
| maybe he meant the glitch glassdoor reviews.
| marban wrote:
| More like content companies, not nec. app providers.
| NoraCodes wrote:
| > I hope this deal works out well for the Glitch employees!
|
| Fastly employee here - we hope it will too! Every single Glitch
| employee chose to stay with the company through the transition,
| so I think we're off to a good start there.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| > Every single Glitch employee chose to stay with the company
| through the transition
|
| Not to be overly negative but IME this is always the
| immediate case. A more accurate measure is how many are still
| with you a year from now.
| withzombies wrote:
| Glitch was the last iteration of FogCreek, right? There were some
| really fantastic companies to come out of FogCreek: StackOverflow
| and Trello being the big ones. It's a little bittersweet to see
| it get acquired.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| Yes...and no.
|
| Those who were there would be better at telling the story, but
| up until the Atlassian acquisition and Joel deciding to spend
| most of his time on a collection of other projects[1], my sense
| of FC was "software for developers." The original product they
| made for project planning (FogBugz) and its SCM companion
| (Kiln) continued on for a while, but seemed to have faded as
| Glitch ramped up.
|
| The other one that comes to mind is Copilot, whose development
| was chronicled in the Aardvark'd movie - I think Tyler took
| over the project and is still running it on the side, last I
| heard.
|
| Kind of bittersweet to see these fade away, but Glitch seems to
| have had more critical success outside of their traditional
| user base so they're running with it.
|
| [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2019/12/05/so-hows-that-
| retir...
| moreira wrote:
| I was actually wondering "hey, isn't that the old Fog Creek"?
| And went on their website, and yeah, not even a mention of
| FogBugz.
|
| It's been kind of wild to see how FogBugz went from their
| main, almost exclusive priority, to something of barely any
| significance to the company, and now I'm guessing it's a
| forgotten product in a subsidiary of a giant CDN. Who knows
| how long until it's shut down.
|
| It's sad; I still love the whole evidence-based scheduling
| part of it, and have never seen anything else like it.
| blinkymach12 wrote:
| FogBugz's evidence-based scheduling always resonated with
| me too. Back in grad school I remember writing a paper
| arguing how it was a fundamentally better way to manage
| project estimates and schedules. Curiously, even at Fog
| Creek, something happened over time where we kind of
| migrated away from using it and instead favored more
| kanban-style project management systems.
|
| I think a few forces came together to diminish the relative
| importance of EBS in project management:
|
| - Rapid shipping got easier; rather than uploading
| executables (or minting CDs!) we shifted to the SaaS model
| and with that, continuous delivery, etc. In this world,
| coordinating a "big release" became more of a
| marketing/communication topic than an engineering one. In
| the FogBugz customer base, it was the game development
| companies that held on to EBS the longest.
|
| - Developer tools in general got easier and faster to use,
| and along with that all of our tolerance for managing
| timers and estimates went down. Estimation and work
| tracking I think are still hugely valuable, but there's an
| ever-higher UX bar to hit to actually have people use the
| software, and we want the computer to be smart enough to
| figure it out on its own. EBS never achieved that fluency
| of UX and it really needs diligent users for it to perform
| well.
|
| For the last ~10 years of Fog Creek, we were largely
| structured so that we had core groups of developers focused
| on our mainstay products, like FogBugz, which were happily
| profitable revenue sources and could fund all of our
| assorted bits of inventiveness. After pushing on FogBugz
| and Kiln in an innovative way for a few years, we came up
| against an adoption wall of sorts--- changing those
| products to increase their user base was harder than
| inventing entirely new products. Trello, in many ways,
| represented our next stab at productivity and software
| development tools, and making FogBugz more Trello-like was
| never going to be as compelling as Trello already was. This
| pattern kept repeating, and so we did our best to stabilize
| FogBugz while inventing other sorts of things that would
| show us a more compelling path to growth.
|
| Glitch was the biggest next invention and its interest and
| adoption so greatly outpaced what growth we could achieve
| in FogBugz that it make sense to reorient around it. But of
| course FogBugz paid the bills and Glitch wasn't doing so
| yet, so that lead to a VC raise for Glitch and, ultimately,
| a sell-off of FogBugz and Kiln.
|
| I still love FogBugz, and all of the users of FogBugz were
| ultimately the seed funders of inventions like Kiln, Stack
| Overflow, Trello, Glitch, HASH, CoPilot, and a dozen others
| that we never let past internal testing. Thanks, FogBugz
| :-)
| DavidWilkinson wrote:
| FogBugz was sold off a while ago now. :)
| ipqk wrote:
| FogBugz was sold of a few years back.
| https://medium.com/make-better-software/moving-forward-
| with-...
| blinkymach12 wrote:
| Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks[1] is a delightful time
| capsule of 2005 software development. It includes interviews
| with @pg, the Reddit founders, and other delights. It's
| available on youtube now.
|
| When I interviewed at Fog Creek, they had a DVD copy of
| Aardvark'd in a care package in my hotel room. I watched it
| that night, and for my interview day in the morning it felt
| like everyone I interviewed with was a movie star. Sneaky
| plan, Joel. Well executed.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg
| wink wrote:
| "Copilot is closing":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31192812
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| Is there a copy in Google's cache? The URL doesn't resolve
| and Internet Archive links fail to load anything.
| krallja wrote:
| anildash wrote:
| Honestly, was a little bittersweet for me too, as we got into
| this process. I'm one of those folks who was a coder working at
| a cubicle reading the early days of Joel on Software, and I
| still think about that history a lot. I do think we'll do
| justice to the legacy, but you're not the only one who feels
| that little pang around this transition, even though obviously
| I'm super excited about it happening.
| runj__ wrote:
| I love glitch for quick prototyping, the fact that I can point
| domain names to projects far more easily than ANY other toolchain
| is amazing.
| umvi wrote:
| Dupe of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31434321
| Yahivin wrote:
| Well played.
| dave84 wrote:
| Fog Creek got aquired!
| oblio wrote:
| End of an era, started circa 2000.
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(page generated 2022-05-19 23:01 UTC)