| Hey all, ET developer here. It was an amazing surprise to find ET on the top of HN today. Since it's the three year anniversary of the project, I wanted to share a post that I wrote to my colleagues about it: RejoinableTCP was a project that I started and abandoned in 11/18/16. RejoinableTCP was supposed to be a remote shell that automatically reconnects without interrupting the session. It was supposed to be resumable like mosh but with the user experience of ssh. I never started it, because: 1. Unix sockets, public-key encryption, and how TCP actually works are the stuff of eldritch nightmares. 2. No one would switch from ssh just to save a few minutes each day. No one would switch from mosh just to get OS scrollbars 3. I wasn't living up to my expectations in my day-job, and it was taking all of my time. There was no way that I would work on something new. I created an empty folder and gave up on the same day. The next day, after using mosh for a few hours, I decided: 1. I would give myself three weeks to learn these things before truly giving up. 2. Even if no one else used it, I'd use it. 3. I'd keep a weekly log of time spent and economize that time. 4. RejoinableTCP was not a good name. So on 11/19/16 Eternal Terminal was born, and three years later, here we are.
Somewhere out there, there is some engineer today who has an idea in the same state that I was with Eternal Terminal three years ago. This post is for you: 1. You can prototype anything in three weeks if you put your heart in it. 2. Look around: all the engineers around you felt that same Calling, when you are building something amazing, time becomes fluid and things just flow. We may all come from different places and backgrounds, but that shared experience unites us. If you see a way to make this place better for you, it will probably make it better for others as well. 3. If you love the job you do and the place you work, you can find a way through almost any situation. The entire company is rigged in your favor. |
I think it's a great lesson for hobbyists: don't worry about perfection. Just POC something and if you're still passionate about it after 3 weeks you can always go back and tidy stuff up.