Even though most of the non-tech people on camera made little sense, I thought this was a great documentary.
It shows how people trade health for little reward in the end. And so many people just go flying under the radar, while they are the real people behind the products we use today.
It's all about the entrepreneurs these days, what happened to those C++ hackers working long into the night?
Ah that's right, they don't look great on magazine covers.
Oh, those hackers are still hacking, on C and C++ and a few other languages.
All of these cloud technologies? All of this high performance storage, networking, virtualization? It's not written in ruby...
I think the difference is that you're on Hacker News, run by a startup accelerator. It's in their interest (albeit unintentionally as far as I can tell) to create a culture/cult around the value of being the founder, not the hacker.
I wish there was more documentarians around, following anyone doing something interesting. Not sure how to help make that happen, but there are so many projects that I would love to see how they were developed, even if years later.
For example: I'd love if documentarians followed Elon Musk around..
"Not all companies succeed, some fail to embrace change. This is the way technology in the free market works. The software industries success has not been driven by government regulation but by freedom and the basic human desire to learn, to innovate, and to excel." ~Bill Gates
As a younger person who lives thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley, I'd love to see more video from that time. I read tons about it, but reading and seeing are different things. AS the end of Code Rush, the investment banker who talks about how in a couple years physical banks might not be around and how the GAP shouldn't be renovating its store but rather invest more money in its website said so much about the kind of mania that took place at the time. I'd love to see more.
It's not a movie but I'd definitely recommend the book about the Boo.com fiasco: http://www.amazon.com/Boo-Hoo-Dot-Com-Story/dp/0099418371 .. I believe it was Europe's biggest dot com era implosion and you can almost see why from page one. An enjoyable read.
Riot on (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427783/) is not from Silicon Valley, but a fascinating story about the Finish dot-com company Riot-E. "The company was such a spectacular failure that it was the subject of the award winning documentary Riot On!."
Thank you for this. Frankly, my knowledge of Netscape's inner workings was so minuscule, that this documentary taught me 90% of what I now know.
Two things jump out:
1. Netscape was, then, where Firefox is perceived to be now, and where Chrome will be in the future: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." (atrb. Jamie Zawinski)
Browsers (et al.) start out light and fast, and as they gain more users, expand to incorporate their needs, until they, themselves, become the bloated behemoths which they replaced.
2. Later on, Zawinski remarks that perhaps the internet will turn into television, where it is controlled by a powerful minority, and states that there are already precedents. More than a decade later, with the likes of Google and Facebook, it doesn't appear that one's fear of that development can rest. The players have changed, but the game remains the same.
If you like this sort of thing, Fog Creek released their 2005 Aardvark'd documentary for free on YouTube last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg .. not balls off the wall exciting but an interesting look at a team of interns developing a product.
"Sort of thing" for classes of things like computers, coders and offices. Otherwise Code Rush and Aardvark'd are not comparable. I suggest Aardvark'd is not worth the time. Code Rush is of interest both historically & for it's insight into the values and attitudes of some damn effective programmers (these people practically made the web accessible for all in a few short years).
if you haven't watched code rush yet, the annotations are really a fantastic addition to it and i'd suggest starting there instead.
edit/comment: the annotations are mostly useful, if like me, you want to rewind to some particular scene when showing part of the film to a friend. i found them pretty useful, but, ymmv :)
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 50.7 ms ] threadComes with lots of extra footage: http://clickmovement.org/code_rush_footage_nods
It shows how people trade health for little reward in the end. And so many people just go flying under the radar, while they are the real people behind the products we use today.
It's all about the entrepreneurs these days, what happened to those C++ hackers working long into the night?
Ah that's right, they don't look great on magazine covers.
All of these cloud technologies? All of this high performance storage, networking, virtualization? It's not written in ruby...
I think the difference is that you're on Hacker News, run by a startup accelerator. It's in their interest (albeit unintentionally as far as I can tell) to create a culture/cult around the value of being the founder, not the hacker.
For example: I'd love if documentarians followed Elon Musk around..
"Not all companies succeed, some fail to embrace change. This is the way technology in the free market works. The software industries success has not been driven by government regulation but by freedom and the basic human desire to learn, to innovate, and to excel." ~Bill Gates
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/
As a younger person who lives thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley, I'd love to see more video from that time. I read tons about it, but reading and seeing are different things. AS the end of Code Rush, the investment banker who talks about how in a couple years physical banks might not be around and how the GAP shouldn't be renovating its store but rather invest more money in its website said so much about the kind of mania that took place at the time. I'd love to see more.
Two things jump out:
1. Netscape was, then, where Firefox is perceived to be now, and where Chrome will be in the future: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." (atrb. Jamie Zawinski) Browsers (et al.) start out light and fast, and as they gain more users, expand to incorporate their needs, until they, themselves, become the bloated behemoths which they replaced.
2. Later on, Zawinski remarks that perhaps the internet will turn into television, where it is controlled by a powerful minority, and states that there are already precedents. More than a decade later, with the likes of Google and Facebook, it doesn't appear that one's fear of that development can rest. The players have changed, but the game remains the same.
Nice catch, thanks for posting this.
http://waxy.org/2009/07/code_rush_in_the_creative_commons/
if you haven't watched code rush yet, the annotations are really a fantastic addition to it and i'd suggest starting there instead.
edit/comment: the annotations are mostly useful, if like me, you want to rewind to some particular scene when showing part of the film to a friend. i found them pretty useful, but, ymmv :)