FounderQuest How Long Could Our Company Survive Without Us?
This week on FounderQuest, Josh, Starr, and Ben hypothesize how long Honeybadger could keep going if they went off the grid given the current pace of tech churn. They also discuss going all-in on COBOL and whether framework trends are actually any different than fashion trends. Get lost in this week's FounderQuest!
Show Notes
Links:
How to Build a Blog in 15 Minutes with Rails
Lindy Effect
Programming is a Pop Culture
Laugh Factory
Star Trek Next Generation
Wallace and Gromit & Wensleydale Cheese
Full Transcript:
Starr:
All right. I guess we're going to be talking about tech churn today, and by that, I guess we mean the sort of turnover, right? Like you have an app, you build an app, and it's not just done. I remember when I was freelance or like people ... I know these clients who weren't in technology and they would just expect that you build this app and you hand it to them and it works. Sort of like a house or something. It's like you built the house and you expect the house to sort of stay standing up.
Starr:
But with software, it seems like you build the house and then you have to sort of keep a crew of carpenters on hand to make sure it doesn't just fall down in a couple of weeks. Because dependencies are always changing. And I don't know. Standards are always changing, there's security issues, and stuff like that.
Starr:
So I guess this week we're going to be talking about that sort of stuff because at this point, it takes a fair amount of work keep Honeybadger ... I'm not talking about running, right. We can go away for a week and it's going to stay up. But if we went away for a year, we would come back and things ... I don't know. I feel like we couldn't just do that. Does that feel like a fair assessment?
Josh:
I think it's partially fair. There's some parts of our system that operate ... I mean that haven't changed for a long time. And there's some that are constantly changing or trends we have to keep up with.
Ben:
I think we couldn't go away for a year on the client libraries. Because every different language has its own schedule for releases. GO just had a release recently that changed error handling. And then on top of the languages, you have frameworks. React had some changes to their error handling recently. So that in particular I think we're affected by.
Ben:
But the core of Honeybadger, I think we could probably go away for ... I don't know. Two or three years before we had really have to change things. Because we picked a lot of boring technologies when we started. And those ... Like for example Postgres doesn't change a whole lot from year to year. I mean, yeah, it's good to upgrade to get new features that come down pipe, can you get better performance and bug fixes and things like that. But generally speaking, Postgres doesn't change a whole lot. And so you can stick with that for a few years.
Josh:
We host this meetup in town here in Vancouver, Washington called Vancouver Full Stack. And this last one, my brother, who's also named Ben, gave a talk on ... It was titled, I think, Building a Rails Blog 15 Years Later. And so it was kind doing the same thing that DHH did in the famous blog in 15 minutes video that got us all into Rails.
Starr:
Oh, yeah. That was like a huge deal back then because it was ... Nowadays, it's super common. It's like you done with some of your framework, you run some generator, and bam, you have some sort of working, basic web application like a blog. But back then, that was unheard of.
Josh:
Yeah, you basically either strung it together yourself out of a bunch of PHP or Perl or whatever files. Or you used WordPress or Typekit, maybe, as I recall. Was that the pro version?
Ben:
Oh, yeah.
Josh:
Yeah.
Josh:
So yeah, that was huge. Like being able to bootstrap your own relatively custom application.
Ben:
It was a movable type. That's what you're thinking about.
Josh:
Movable type, that's what it is.
Josh:
It was interesting, though, going through his talk, not a whole lot has changed in Rails as far as building a block in 15 minutes. I think the generators generate a little bit more code for you now. Actually, they're a little bit more explicit about ... So they put the code in your controller instead of just hiding it in the framework. But other than that, there was not a whole lot that has changed with Rails as far as the basics. Which I found really interesting because it's like how it's been 15 years. Because I think it was 2005 that that video came out, if I recall correctly.
Josh:
And of course, I mean, Rails has gotten a lot better since then. But also it has kind of just quietly done it's work for a lot of people, I think during that time. And they just had to upgrade it and ... You have to keep up on it. But compared to some of the other tech stacks that you could choose that aren't around anymore-
Ben:
The funny thing is that Rails itself, it's been around for long enough. But it's funny that you should say not much has changed. Because if you were around back for Rails 2 and upgraded to Rails 3, that was huge. And the upgrade from Rails 3 to Rails 4 was also nontrivial. And it hasn't been as bad like 5 to 6.
Ben:
But there some pretty big adjustments that happened in Rails. But yet, even still, the philosophy has changed not so much. The approach of building apps has barely changed. Like you said, it's a very similar of how it was back in the beginning. So I think that says a lot about the vision and the foresight that they had with baking in the original stuff in the framework.
Starr:
It's an interesting-
Josh:
Right, and I mean like-
Starr:
It's an interesting case. I just wanted to say it's an interesting case because with Rails, I have a feeling that ... How long ago was it? 15 years ago, you said?
Josh:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Starr:
Between 15 years ago and now, I imagine there's no code in the framework that is still there that was there 15 years ago. Or if it is, it's like a line containing a closing bracket or something. And yeah, from the standpoint of your brother trying to make the blog app, it seems very similar. And so I wonder ... It's almost as if you could say that Rails, the framework, the actually code of Rails, has had a huge amount of tech churn. But its certain aspects of like user interface have been made a bit more sort of stable.
Starr:
So in terms of a basic blog, and sort of functionality you need for that, the user interface that Rails presents in order to create this blog is pretty similar to what it was 15 years ago.
Josh:
Yeah, the user interface is pretty much the same. And a blog is the simplest Rails application you can build. That's why you chose that, I'm sure. As a straight example-
Starr:
Yeah, and I just want to be clear. By user interface, I'm stretching that a little bit. I'm meaning like all of the sort of public ... The things that a programmer would use in Rails to make the blog. So all-
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