Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by talmand 3916 days ago
What do you mean? I fully believe that a competent developer could sit down and make something like Twitter in a weekend. Especially since the concept and what to do with it is already on display for them to copy.

Now, to create a Twitter clone in a weekend when there's no Twitter to go by? Nope.
2 comments
davidcgl 3916 days ago
If you boil down the entirety of Twitter into just a CRUD app that allows you to post 140 characters at a time, then yes, you can make that in a weekend.

Well, how about recommended posts / people to follow (ML)? Sponsored posts with a buy button (3rd part integration)? Growth and metrics (data analytics)? A software product is never just about pixels on the screen; and trivializing the engineering effort behind it is insulting to Twitter employees, some of whom are brilliant engineers I know.

link
talmand 3916 days ago
I think you misunderstand my point. Your first sentence is similar to what I'm saying. Your second part is not what I'm saying.
link
nkohari 3916 days ago
You could create something that looks like Twitter, but you couldn't create Twitter. Ignoring the network effects and scale that Twitter has is ignoring its primary value.
link
talmand 3916 days ago
That's my point.
link
nkohari 3916 days ago
It's hard for me to get that from what you wrote. It seemed that your point was more that the existence of Twitter means it's easy to reproduce it, but before Twitter, it was difficult to envision a site like Twitter.

My counterpoint is that it's not actually the idea that's interesting, it's the fact that they've convinced lots of people to use it, and have built a system powerful enough to support that scale.

link
001sky 3916 days ago
The original comment expressly states a "non-scaling" version of twitter...what is so hard about that? this sub=thread then clearly illustrates what "non-scaling" means and doesn't mean. smh
link
mwfunk 3916 days ago
The poster was stating that writing Twitter was easy, anyone can do it, the only thing Twitter really has going for it are the network effects of having a huge user base and lots of visibility.

I do think that Twitter's biggest asset are the network effects that it currently enjoys, but I don't think that it would be trivial to recreate what they've done in order to create a Twitter competitor. It's not insurmountable, but it's not trivial either.

The original comment was clearly meant to trivialize the engineering. "One guy can do it in a weekend" is hyperbole, it's something you say when you're trying to communicate that anyone can do something in a relatively short amount of time. If there are a bunch of downvotes I would assume they're more for the hyperbole than people actually disagreeing with whether or not one weekend is enough time to write "non-scaling Twitter", which isn't specific enough for anyone to argue about how long it would take to do.

link
talmand 3915 days ago
I don't think copying Twitter as a whole is easy nor do I think just anyone can do it. As pointed out, a simple non-scaling version of Twitter could be done by a competent developer in a weekend. I'm a front-end developer and I feel confident I could do it, just not in a weekend.

I fail to see where I am dismissing the accomplishments of the Twitter engineers in pointing out that creating, what is essentially, a RSS feed with a 140 character limit over a weekend would be difficult.

I believe you are complaining over something no one has stated.

link