Really?
Clearly the whole point was to get away from developing desktop applications, and realizing the single-source, rapid development nature of web apps.
Please don't tell me that developing client apps on Windows was so much worse then doing it on Linux. Its bullshit. Overfocusing on this aspect of the story feels like platform fanboyism, misses the real point, and just overall kind of cheapens PG's stellar image.
- Many Windows-only concepts (registry) hold key configuration data.
- Lack of a proper command line environment (somewhat covered by Cygwin, but not ideal). PowerShell is interesting, but, again, is very alien to non-Windows tools.
- No select-middle-click copy/paste (it's an incredible time-saver).
- Limited number of available languages and tools and the difficulty of integrating them (you have to add every install directory to PATH - unless you are running Cygwin).
- Case-insensitive filesystem (and some subtle bugs that it allows).
- It's almost impossible to open a tempfile and delete it while you still have the file handle.
- No package management (you can't just "yum install" what you need)
- No package management (you have to bundle every dependency with your installer)
It's not bullshit. Unless you are developing for Windows only, developing under Windows is quite painful.
If you didn't make Windows apps at the time, it probably seemed really complicated. It really wasn't. Most of the issues were with C/C++, and the complexity that brings. VB and Delphi were decent alternatives -- there were some 4G languages that worked ok as well.
Making viaweb a web-app instead is obvious in retrospect. But not because making Windows apps is so hard -- it's the deployment that the web brings, not the ease of development. In 1995, there was no super-easy way to make web-apps -- PG and RTM had to invent that too.
Uh, what Linux? No, pg worked on Lisp Machines before, and that's why Windows were hurting him so much.
PG, is that what you do between YC batches? When will we get to see some of your paintings? :)
[edited for clarity]
A very interesting question: once it's all said and done (let's say in 30 years), do you think YC will have a greater valuation than any single YC startup?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay#History
Viaweb was not an e-commerce site like Amazon or Ebay. Its customers were merchants rather than consumers.
Ignoring the mistake of valuing YC at $13.7B instead of its companies, here's a crazy idea: I wonder when we'll see YC go for an IPO?
What would be fantastic though, is for YC to incorporate their holding of each individual year (older than, say, 3 years) into a fund, and then take those public (and continue to do so). An annual YC ETF.
PG, has an annual YC ETF crossed your mind?
Two things I'm interested in hearing more about:
1) What was the thinking behind viaweb? yc? How did pg arrive at the decision? Was it as simple as the insights that were mentioned? Were alternatives considered? (Before I started http://www.collegeanswerz.com/, I had a list of hundreds of ideas that I went through before deciding on a website with better college reviews.) If so, what made viaweb/yc better than the alternatives? What aspects of viaweb/yc were forseen, and which just happened because of luck?
2) What was pg thinking he'd do with his life before viaweb? yc? Before viaweb, it says that he was basically flip flopping between consulting and art. What did he think he'd do with his life at this point? Any plans? What was he feeling? Excited? Anxious? Bored? What about the 7 years between viaweb and yc? Thoughts and plans about what he'd do with his life?
I know this stuff isn't directly related to viaweb and yc, but it's useful to know thought processes, rather than just touching on the main insights. You can't really learn from insights. You can learn from thought processes.
Is it true that "distaste for Windows" was a motivating factor behind Viaweb?
For me, Windows was an enormous itch. I scratched it with UNIX. Thank you, Redmond, for the motivation.
