Interview with Niall

Just a quick note, Niall Kennedy has posted the conversation he and I had on Friday on his blog. It’s available as both text and an MP3/podcast if you don’t mind listening to me ramble for twenty minutes.

I was a bit out of it by the end of the day Friday, but there’s some things that may be of interest if you’re curious about some of the things going on with Six Apart or TypePad. I made some assumptions that we share a common context since we it was just a chat between the two of us , so please don’t take any omissions or errors as malicious intent. I’m not a trained spokesmodel; I just play one on the web. Update: One of the folks I was offering a blanket apology to asked for a specific clarification, and I’m glad to do so. David Heinemeier Hansson asked me to clarify what I’d said about Ruby on Rails in the interview, and, while I’d have to listen through all the audio to hear my exact phrasing, my intent in talking about platforms that scale was unclear.

Put simply: Nobody gets an app to scale without putting a lot of resources into it. A solid infrastructure is a serious investment, and fortunately these days one great way to get a lot of the pieces of that infrastructure is using technology like the open-source pieces the LiveJournal team has released. Since much of that works as well with Ruby on Rails as it does with Perl on Catalyst or whatever else one uses, it’s not a slight against any tech platform, it’s a clarification about focus. We’re focused on scaling. Sorry to David and anyone else in the Rails community to whom I gave the impression that their platform isn’t as beautiful and sweet and strong as any other. 🙂