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by troncheadle 3318 days ago
I have to say... I don't understand what about Firebase's offering is SO killer or unique. I feel like it would be very easy to roll one's own custom 'Firebase.' I'm unsure as to why anyone would ever choose to predicate their businesses continued existence on another platform, especially one that can be replicated in like, an afternoon.
1 comments
ruslan_talpa 3318 days ago
Can you replicate it and open source it tomorrow afternoon please? :) I'll pay for your time.

While what they did was certainly a dick move, this type of comments trivzializes and diminishes the work the firebase engineers put it. Incidentally it also implies that google is full of stupid execs with money that pay millions of tech that can be build by one dev in an afternoon.

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troncheadle 3318 days ago
I can definitely do that. I only collect payments up front, so fork it over and I will have it for you tomorrow, likely even tonight.

I think what I said ("I don't understand what firebase does that is so killer or unique") is very different from what you are reading ("firebase is useless, firebase's engineers do stupid work, and google is full of student execs with money that pay millions of tech that can be build by one dev in an afternoon"). I think your characterization of my statement is more than a bit unfair.

I'm still at a loss for what firebase is beyond a key value store with web sockets. I think it would be a problem to scale a platform like this on ones own -- maybe that's why to use Firebase? I've used it in hackathon settings where I didn't want to roll my own backend, or to mock web-sockets pre Django 1.9 / Channels.

Still, if I had a business that depended on a key value store with web sockets I would definitely build it myself.

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troncheadle 3318 days ago
A couple more things regarding the trivialization of the engineers work:

1: Just because work is done does not mean it is important 2: It is possible to say that the product is not special or unique and yet the hard work that is done to keep that product up all of the time and scale it to many of customers is special.

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