Just in case anyone doesn't recognize this quote, it is from the 2007 hacker news post about Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
Thankfully your options are not limited to either Dropbox or FTP. Thus people who want simplicity can have Dropbox (or similar) and people who want control can have sshfs or any number of other tools out there that require some assembly but also don't suffer from the numerous problems that pre-TCP/IP protocols like FTP suffer from.
I’m literally talking about the theory of the paper by Richard Gabriel (https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html) which is that worse solutions often win because it takes too much time to bring a good solution to market.
If you were trying to make a “good” solution to the problem addressed by Drop Box, it probably would not look like Drop Box. For example, you’d do a real network file system that wouldn’t need to do a binary diff of the file each time to see what changed, because it would have access to the block level changes at the file system layer.[1] You'd have file locking in the protocol (like CFS), and could sync data from a locked file instead of waiting for the lock to be released.[1]
It also probably wouldn’t have made Houston a billionaire because who is going to install a kernel driver off the internet? But on the flip side, Dropbox almost certainly killed much of the interest in real network file systems, because it is good enough.
Which is why we’re all using an internet powered by Javascript, Electron apps on the desktop, etc. Worse is better.
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/help/syncing-uploads/upload-entire-f...
[2] https://www.dropbox.com/help/syncing-uploads/stuck-syncing
NFS and AFS (from what limited I know of it) are more designed for local networks thus to leverage NFS over a WAN you'd then need to tunnel your connection (eg via SSH or VPN). So while there is obviously overlap between them and Dropbox I wouldn't really say the two are all that comparable.
However to answer your point, I don't think anyone would disagree with the specific part of your point regarding how simplicity is often better than something arguably more powerful. However just because something is simple it doesn't mean it isn't also good. "Good" is just a question of whether it meets requirements. If your requirement is that it can be installed and operated by layman then Dropbox is a far better solution than any other the other proposals you've mentioned.
Well, there is an sshfs FUSE filesystem, for what it's worth
That's being a bit alarmist, isn't it? It's not worse is better. It's the right amount of compromises is better. Or, "good enough is better".
Perfection usually has diminishing returns and is rarely obtainable. Worse is not better. Good enough is better; objectively so.
Even SMB is better
A good comparison would be comparing using make files and a simple text editor like vim to visual studio. Is visual studio truly better because it offers more features when a make file and vim can do much the same? A programmer used to VS might call the make file method worse, but the reality is that it is the simpler path which makes it better. Realize that simple doesn't mean "simple to use" but simple in terms of complexity (philosophical simplicity is at play here).
Worse is better is better translated as "A simple design is better, but not from the users perspective."
> Simplicity -- the design must be simple, both in implementation and interface. It is more important for the implementation to be simple than the interface. Simplicity is the most important consideration in a design.
> Correctness -- the design must be correct in all observable aspects. It is slightly better to be simple than correct.
Dropbox is simple in implementation, at the cost of simplicity in the interface and correctness. E.g. it is simpler to simply punt on locked files in Windows. Tell the user to quit Word if they want their file to sync, instead of handling file locking at the protocol level. Likewise, it's simpler to detect changed files after the fact than write a filesystem driver to knows what blocks are changed. But it degrades the user experience (their computer burns clock cycles re-figuring-out information a real filesystem driver would've had).
The upside of all that is that Dropbox was simple to implement, simple to port, and simple to deploy, which made it popular:
> Therefore, the worse-is-better software first will gain acceptance, second will condition its users to expect less, and third will be improved to a point that is almost the right thing.
How many files do you have? I've got 26000 files in my Mac's dropbox folder. (Granted, very few of them change more than once or twice a day; maybe 20 or so of those do.)
EDIT: Clearly not just me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12464901 (thread from 2016)
If this was your intent, then using the tired "worse is better" trope and claiming an issue from 7 years ago, that no one else has claimed to have seen is seems a far cry from it.
Dropbox became popular because it was easy, it worked, and did exactly what it said it did. That might be "dumb" in that it's not feature packed, but you use a lot of negative connotations when none are required.
IIRC, there was a variable, hard limit for objects in a folder or locks in a folder where it would go wacky.
Docker (3.13) Dropbox (2.08) Outlook (2.03) Safari (2.02) Slack (1.57)
Total 131771 files currently on disk (I'm using Selective Sync, because SSD prices)
This has aged gloriously, thank you!
The 3G was the breakthrough model, but I lend that as much to the dock connector (which was available in USB and FireWire) and the growth of x-platform iTunes as anything.
The broader point that it required Windows support for the iPod to become mainstream is of course true. That said, the iPod was also the reason so many of us became Mac users in the early 00s because the “halo effect” was undeniable.
This idea that we're always making sale predictions is a vice of the startup culture.
Slack has the better part of a billion dollars in funding for what's essentially resource-hungry IRC with pictures. Dropbox does little you couldn't accomplish with a server and rsync.
What I'm really eager to see is git for everyone else.
Most cloud storage providers offer rudimentary versioning; are you referring to the idea of promoting commits to being first-class? It would need to be baked into Word, Excel and similar, and those tools already have builtin version tracking, as horrible(?) as it is, so... :/
Of course, a solution that works well with all the different binary file formats people in those fields use wouldn't be easy.
It would definitely need to work with large files though, which categorically precludes Git.
The first point, I think, would be building a delta engine with case-specific code for the most common ubiquitous file formats, like docx, xlsx, psd, etc. Of course it wouldn't be able to be perfect with everything but it would certainly be better than eg just recompressing each version or something equally naive.
The UX would be the next major hurdle. Time Machine is a good example of the kind of simplicity that would be needed, but it would need to be a have a bit more surface area to be applicable and useful to all scenarios.
One other feature that comes to mind, which would be incredibly difficult to get right but probably critical, would be useful version diffing. I think keeping this simple and just building something that can do $anything->SVG (with maybe cheats where bunches of the SVG is mostly just a bitmap in certain cases) and then doing something fast on the SVG (and/or its bitmap contents...) would probably be the most viable target.
No doubt there would be a learning curve. I think that's OK. The target market here is serious users who already dedicate time to learning professional tools like Photoshop.
:(
That would take years to get anywhere with ._.
The diffing idea I suggested above is just manageable, a la macOS Preview, with hacks. Branching requires folding-back-in, and that's not just a case of "A or B", it's a case of "A, B and C conflict with D and E, while F G and H are okay," where I could then say "save B and E but drop F". If B is a layer, E is an imported asset and F is a custom filter... you get the picture. You need a reimplementation of Photoshop (halting problem).
:/
Sad that everyone hates GIMP.
But... hmm, this could get folded into Blender, and then make the rest of the industry jealous.......
When you simplify and generalize git to the point where "everyone else" can use it, you get Apple's Time Machine and Windows' File History. I'm not that familiar with Time Machine, but if File History had a more visible interface that you could use to easily "checkpoint" individual documents or directories on demand, you'd pretty much be there.
Branching is too complicated for most people to work with and overkill for most scenarios.
Also, to get more ideas:
echo "Make a startup with "$(ls /bin /usr/bin | sort -R | head -n 3)