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Comment by ykumar6 | Hacker News Reader

I look at things through a different framework. The products that end up winning in the very competitive world of software are the products that evolve very quickly.

Almost all the value creation that's happening in the cloud is about enabling agility, and very fast release models.

Agility is far more valuable then the time/effort it takes to maintain these apps.

Agility is the ability to launch a new product or feature faster than your competitors

When agility is no longer valuable to a business, they already have a dominant position in the market or have been disrupted by something else.

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I believe your mental model is so tied-up in your ability to create a company based on the SaaS model, it is preventing your ability to comprehend the power behind a platform like Sandstorm. Somehow, you seem to get the power of Docker, but not a simpler, user-friendly version of the same idea.

You obviously are not a believer in the Sandstorm platform, and are thinking about things in a way that I would call traditional (at least for the last 10 years). You could very well be correct, but many of us on this thread think you are incorrect. It's as simple as that.

The power of Docker is enabling companies to move faster. Docker lets developers and companies to continuously deploy with fewer bottlenecks and issues.

Yes, I realize it can be used for other things. I'm not sure if there is value in those things.

> The products that end up winning in the very competitive world of software are the products that evolve very quickly.

On this point, I completely agree. Where we seem to disagree is how best to make sure developers can iterate quickly.

But is that agility good for consumers? In my world, it's not. I deal with a lot of seniors, and you know what they hate? How people in Silicon Valley feel obligated to move stuff around every six weeks.

In fact, most people not in Silicon Valley hate it. And something like Sandstorm puts the user in control of whether or not their stuff changes. Someone can have auto-update on, and have the latest everything, and someone else, even on the same server, can choose to keep a stable version that does what they need.

I don't know, but the solution is education. There more educated the consumer is, the less a company like google or facebook can get away with.

Clearly, there is not enough education about privacy and how your data is being used to extract money from your pockets.

But when it comes to agility, yes, it's more about improving upon (or finding) the value proposition of that product.

If uber could cut down the time it takes to find a car from 5 minutes to 1 minute, wouldn't that be better for everyone?

How does a company on Sandstorm compete with a modern SaaS company that can change an algo behind-the-scenes and instantly improve experience?

I still feel like you're assuming modern SaaS companies changing things behind the scenes "improves" the experience.

Those sorts of mindsets are why my views on Google has heavily soured over the years, the same way my feelings soured about Facebook.

But I definitely agree that consumer education is key. :)

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