Comment by dEnigma
4 years ago
Really cool of you to mention this publicly! As thehodge said in his comments this is far from usual, and most big websites would just silently renew their certificate without giving any credit.
> Yes, I know most of you can do this in 3 lines of Python and a cron job
At first I thought this was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the famous Dropbox dismissal by BrandonM https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
I actually stole that line from something Dom said in our email conversation...
(Also, this is offtopic but I'm on a quest to get people to realize that BrandonM's comment has been unfairly characterized:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275)
I've caught a few of those once it's too late to reply, and I'm not sure I entirely agree with your sentiment.
Unless I'm totally out of touch, I've always seen the comment referenced as either dismissing a simple solution because a complicated one exists, and/or now having a grasp on how complicated a solution is.
Most recently I referenced the comment in a discussion around Laravel Forge, which deploys and manages servers for hosting websites. I love it personally, but a friend was of the opinion that "it's unnecessary, all you have to do to setup a server is..."
I get that he was trying to be helpful with his post, but that doesn't dismiss the fact that his very first point was "You can already do this by..." and then proceeding to provide a valid, but complicated solution that very few people could do.
There's nothing wrong with his post, but it does act as a good reminder that there's room for products that provide a simple solution where only complicated options exist.
Yes I agree, I mentioned it recently and then shortly after saw someone referencing dang's quest in another thread, and felt a bit guilty oh-I-hope-mine-wasn't-taken-that-way.
As I said then: 'Usually when I see it it's used either in a humbling reminder that the future isn't known sense, or a suggestion not to underestimate the value in simplifying, de-nerd-ifying existing things that work.' But also perhaps/hopefully the most 'jerky' ones get flagged out of my view, and unfortunately into dang's.
I certainly don't see (and would flag myself) anything I felt was saying 'Oh this [BM] guy doesn't know what he's talking about, what an idiot, hahahaha'. It's usually just 'oof, isn't hindsight wonderful, I must try to learn from this'.
Funnily enough I just read some more of the context around that comment and have to agree that it wasn't that bad. I think people, including myself, mostly remember the "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by[...]" part. Personally I always find that hilarious because e.g. my mother can trivially use Linux and Dropbox, but I would have an awful time trying to walk her through BrandonM's proposed setup.