Changelog Interviews Building the developer cloud
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Dec 12, 2024 Kurt Mackey, Co-founder and CEO of Fly.io, dives into the intricacies of building a developer-centric cloud platform. He discusses the concept of a 'Rebel Alliance' among tech companies, highlighting the alliance's importance for cloud innovations. Kurt shares insights on balancing cloud complexity with usability, critiques of Neon and Supabase, and the exciting plans for a simplified CDN called Pipely. He candidly reflects on the emotional challenges of entrepreneurship while outlining future prospects for Fly.io and the evolving landscape of cloud services.
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Complexity vs. Reliability
- DHH criticized Fly's complexity, arguing that simpler infrastructure is more reliable.
- Kurt Mackey acknowledged this, noting the inherent complexity of serving diverse customer needs.
Merchants of Complexity
- Overcomplicating infrastructure can be driven by profit motives, not user needs.
- Kurt Mackey warned against selling unnecessarily complex solutions, citing Hortonworks and Hadoop as examples.
Developer Priorities
- Developers often desire free or very cheap solutions for less important apps, but prioritize reliability for critical ones.
- Kurt Mackey highlighted this tension, contrasting Neon's focus on cheap, disposable databases with RDS's consistent pricing for reliable ones.
