[HN Gopher] Story: Redis and its creator antirez
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Story: Redis and its creator antirez
Author : nixcraft
Score : 174 points
Date : 2023-05-09 08:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.brachiosoft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.brachiosoft.com)
| [deleted]
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| antirez is the pride of Italy
| racl101 wrote:
| [flagged]
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| More like him and Pier Giorgio Perotto, but if you prefer
| cheesy stereotypes go ahead.
| m3047 wrote:
| > his father started working with programmable logic controllers
| (PLCs), and his interest in these controllers led him to purchase
| a Z80 processor board and start programming on it
|
| In the PLC world there is a notion of "tags". These are values
| pushed or poked by PLCs with some kind of external (networked)
| access. They are essentially network-wide global variables. If
| you think about it for a little while this looks like key+value
| store. There are some common operations with tags: on/off,
| counters, bit fields, along with static/updating values. There is
| a notion that if a tag hasn't been updated in a while it is
| "stale" or unreliable.
|
| Although my POC deployment of RKVDNS (DNS Proxy for Redis
| https://github.com/m3047/rkvdns/) revolves around SecOps / DevOps
| / DevSecOps, my horizon is SCADA and rationalizing the federation
| (edge) vs centralization (cloud) dilemma for observables,
| leveraging the reality that these days even (Purdue) Level 1 has
| DNS.
| frankwiles wrote:
| Half of the things I do to improve performance for clients
| involve Redis. If you haven't played with it be sure to give it a
| chance.
| lagrange77 wrote:
| From his website http://invece.org/:
|
| > Artificial Intelligence will completely reshape our society
| very soon. If a universal income is not provided in a timely
| fashion (as AI makes many workers no longer relevant) we are
| going to be in big trouble.
|
| I think about that very often these days. Governments worldwide
| must act on that _now_. Because even if they 'll start a
| legislative process to implement it, it will take a long time and
| we are running out of time.
| [deleted]
| ftxbro wrote:
| guys he is still here as user name antirez and he's working on
| freakwan https://github.com/antirez/freakwan
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > FreakWAN is an effort to create a LoRa-based open WAN
| network, completely independent from Internet and the cellular
| phones networks.
|
| > LoRa (from "long range") is a physical proprietary radio
| communication technique.
| capableweb wrote:
| Freakwan: A MicroPython driver for the SX1276 LoRa chip - 113
| points - 18 hours ago - 42 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35882967
| antirez wrote:
| Thank you to the author of this post, and to the nice comments
| here :) The story is well researched. There are a couple of
| errors and a few things to add maybe. I'll fill the gaps in this
| comment.
|
| 1. After the TI99/4A, that is indeed the first machine I used, I
| started to write serious code in a ZX Spectrum. Then, a few years
| later, I received my first MS-DOS machine: make sure to Google it
| if you are not from Italy, it was an Olivetti PC1 Prodest, the
| most strange MS-DOS compatible system EVER.
|
| 2. In Milan I was not fired, I quit myself to return in Sicily.
|
| 3. When I posted my first message in BUGTRAQ, it was davidw
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidw) that helped me.
|
| 4. It was often said that the MERZ port was for Alessia Merz
| stupidity. This is wrong: we liked the showgirl (I and my friend
| Oscar), and we liked the fact she replied lightly in the TV
| shows, she just tried to have fun, and for us this resonated with
| having fun while programming stuff without a purpose: in short
| HackValue. That's why the Redis port is MERZ on the phone
| keyboard.
|
| 5. It is true that for many months I continued hacking on Redis
| even if I didn't receive so great feedbacks, but back then one
| rarely hacked on OSS software hoping for success or money as a
| main outcome. It was just that day-to-day jobs mostly sucked, and
| you wanted something better, more interesting to hack on. At
| least for many of us the drive was just that. So I continued
| hacking on Redis even when it surpassed by a lot our LLOOGG
| needs.
|
| 6. The first design sketch of the Twitter Redis-based timeline
| cache was made by Rob Pointer (the author of the eggrdrop IRC
| bot!) and myself at Twitter HQ, on some random whiteboard.
|
| 7. WOHPE turned out to be one of the most read sci-fi books in
| Italy, among the ones written by Italian sci-fi authors in recent
| years. Initially the readers were mostly programmers but now a
| lot of sci-fi enthusiasts are reading it. It's very strange that
| certain things written in the book now are becoming real fears,
| or even happened. For instance multiple readers of the English
| edition believe that this is likely the first accurate
| description of "prompt engineer":
| https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1635022116654563334
|
| 8. Now I'm writing a new book but also programming again. I hope
| to continue with both the activities in parallel.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Thank you for Redis, and for sharing your story with this
| article's author. Your artistic view of programming resonates
| strongly with me and I look forward to reading your books!
| matchagaucho wrote:
| Indeed, great article. My first startup had a Telecom-Italia
| web project (via HP) around 2005. We possibly overlapped.
|
| I've since launched 3 long-running apps on Redis. Five-nines
| and Fast. Much indebted to your work.
|
| [T][h][a][n][k][ ][Y][o][u]
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| The Hacker News response to Dropbox is probably the funniest
| ever.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35891862 and marked it off
| topic.
|
| Btw I think that comment has been super unfairly characterized
| over the years. The commenter was being nice and trying to help
| Drew with his YC application. Past explanations of this:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I think people unfairly poke fun at the Dropbox skepticism on
| HN.
|
| As a linux user, you can already build such a system yourself
| quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally
| with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted
| filesystem.
| askafriend wrote:
| Nobody cares about linux users.
|
| If you can't deliver the value of what you described to
| normal people, it just doesn't matter. That's why Dropbox is
| a $7B+ company today - because they were able to
| commercialize something that previously was only accessible
| to a few people who knew weird computer commands.
|
| To the normal person none of this is "quite trivial".
|
| EDIT: I missed the joke. I get it now. Well-played OP.
| codegeek wrote:
| "CVS". That gave it away :).
| [deleted]
| Freedom2 wrote:
| I have a few qualms with your solution...
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Is this a joke...? God I hope so. Absolutely clueless
| vlunkr wrote:
| Yes, it's a reference to the original HN thread.
| dharmab wrote:
| You and I have very different definitions of trivial
| boffinAudio wrote:
| I love Redis and what its done for the world but my favourite
| antirez project is LOAD81, which I think is just a few core
| modules away from being an amazing new platform for content
| sharing .. ;)
|
| Imagine we have a network of LOAD81 users who share Lua bytecode
| instead of HTML .. hmm ..
|
| https://github.com/antirez/load81.git
| gruturo wrote:
| Oh, love the name, nice homage to the commodore 64 era ( LOAD
| "*",8,1 ). The editor screenshot also has a strong C64 vibe.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| A legendary hacker.
|
| > In February 2009, antirez's friend David Welton helped him
| share Redis to the world on Hacker News. The response was pretty
| muted; apart from David, only four people responded. Three of
| them said there were already similar projects out there, and only
| one person responded positively and offered to help.
|
| So don't worry if you don't immediately get traction.
| samwillis wrote:
| Here's that first thread:
|
| > _Redis - 23 points by davidw on Feb 25, 2009 | 11 comments_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494649
| kbenson wrote:
| I think this also points to something a bit more subtle, but
| obvious now that we're looking back on this in hindsight an
| calling antirez a legendary hacker. That is, sometimes it's not
| what you do but how you do it. Redis would not be where it is
| today were it not for his incredible effort to keep the quality
| high and the code performant. It's entirely true that a lot of
| what redis did was already done at the time it was released.
| It's also true that in the end that's not what mattered.
| davidw wrote:
| Oh... hey, I remember that. antirez and I used to work together
| at Linuxcare Italy. He's always been a bright guy, and also
| just a really pleasant person to hang out with.
| antirez wrote:
| Thank you so much for your kind words, David. I hope soon or
| later we will meet again :)
| mathgladiator wrote:
| > So don't worry if you don't immediately get traction.
|
| There's so much truth to this. I've got a wacky project that is
| a crazy platform ( https://www.adama-platform.com/ ), and I've
| started to test my thesis by hiring a few contractors via
| upwork.
|
| I found this great kid that just got to work and made a game!
| It feels fantastic just to see someone use something that I
| made as a creative tool.
|
| I've got a lot to work on, but I'm keeping the faith going
| strong.
| lelanthran wrote:
| Very off-topic, but ...
|
| > I've got a wacky project that is a crazy platform (
| https://www.adama-platform.com/ ),
|
| I don't think you realise just how many of your posts link to
| this project. It doesn't seem like you are able to respond to
| a HN comment/post _without_ linking your project.
|
| IOW, you aren't able to hold a conversation without reference
| to your project. This is probably not healthy - I mean,
| surely you have opinions that aren't colored by your project,
| and you have interests that aren't linked to your project?
| capableweb wrote:
| > The response was pretty muted; apart from David, only four
| people responded. Three of them said there were already similar
| projects out there, and only one person responded positively
| and offered to help.
|
| It's still pretty useful, as an outsider, as then the creator
| can hopefully explain the difference, if it's not already
| outlined in whatever gets submitted.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-02-25
|
| It was also still on the frontpage, so not sure I'd say muted.
| I'm sure it led to many people trying it out, some giving
| feedback, others eventually contributing. The effect can be
| bigger than just comments in the submission itself.
| doh wrote:
| > three of them said there were already similar projects out
| there
|
| Quintessential Hacker News
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| He could have had dozens of additional responses if he had
| picked a name that some obscure 80s technology already used. HN
| will bikeshed endlessly about overloaded names.
| willcipriano wrote:
| These are the sort of people whom you invite over for a nice
| dinner and they ask why didn't we all go to The French Laundry
| instead.
| scottlamb wrote:
| I have a different perspective. Looking at the original post,
| [1] it wasn't labeled "Show HN" or posted by the project's
| author (antirez). So my first read on seeing it in the HN
| front page would be "hey, I found this cool project". And
| these people commented with links to similar projects, which
| I take as something like "if you liked that project, you
| might like this one, too", or "I wonder how these compare". I
| find that sort of comment helpful and curiosity-inspiring.
| Very different from "you shouldn't have bothered writing this
| when some other project exists". I can't tell from the date-
| resolution timestamps but they might well have been posted
| before the author showed up in the thread.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494649
| soneca wrote:
| To be fair, I think _"one person responded positively and
| offered to help"_ is also quintessential HN.
| doh wrote:
| Yes. HN is an absolutely fantastic community. That's why we
| are here. As every community it has its own idiosyncrasies.
| Recognizing them and poking fun into ourselves strengthens
| rather than weakens then community.
| jsty wrote:
| Add in a dash of complaining about name clashes
| eternalban wrote:
| Not mentioned in OP: Ezra/ezmobius (RIP) whipped out a client
| in Ruby and posted it in that same thread.
| dbeley wrote:
| Great write-up! I feel those stories of open source developers
| are really lacking in the space given the importance of their
| work.
| bosky101 wrote:
| Wow, we'll researched story.
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