JS Git

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/creationix/js-git/posts/430922

by mooreds • 13 years ago

43 18 13 years ago

tqc2• 13 years ago

I wish him luck, though having implemented a significant part of git in JavaScript myself, I wonder how well the end result will work - JavaScript does not do well with either large downloads or processing binary data, and git involves a lot of both.

alexjeffrey• 13 years ago

Javascript is getting better with at least the latter thanks to typed arrays - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Typed_ar...

tqc2• 13 years ago

That's a start, but it's more suited for smaller tasks I think, with the main benefit being that you don't have to clutter your code with type conversion. A string with custom (no) encoding does fairly well for holding the binary data as is.

It was actually memory/GC issues that got me to give up on the js implementation - it's very hard to prevent js from creating huge numbers of temporary variables, which then cause the system to freeze for several seconds while they are cleaned up.

zodiac• 13 years ago

is your implementation publicly available? I'd like to take a look at it

matthewrudy2• 13 years ago

$12,000 a month sounds like a commercial rate (roughly the London Ruby contracting rate). Do these open-source Kickstarter projects normally pay themselves so well?

dasil0032• 13 years ago

It's not a rate (all the backers are paying a fixed cost of their own choice), it's a salary. Why should someone take a pay cut in order to produce an open source project?

matthewrudy2• 13 years ago

By his own schedule, he has allocated a month of his time per $12,000 funded (to me this is a rate).

I'm not saying he should take a pay cut. Just that if this is common, then the nature of Open Source has changed.

It seems to be the best of all worlds; Good rate, choice of project, open source, low risk.

pc86• 13 years ago

Please tell me where you work that $144,000 isn't an obscenely large salary. He doesn't live in San Francisco or Manhattan or London, he lives in Texarkana where the cost of living is a substantial percentage below the US average.[0] I have no doubt that you can live well in that area on 1/3 of what he's asking.

I'm not saying the guy should work for peanuts or that people who work on F/OSS should do so with no financial upside, but let's stop pretending that $12,000 in a month is a normal salary or something that doesn't need at least some justification. Clearly people think it's worth it and that's great, but the whole tone of "I have $12,000 and now I can afford to work on this for a month" just makes me sick to my stomach.

[0] http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/texas/texarkan...

th• 13 years ago

Income is a strange thing.

Scenario 1:

Make a product in a month and sell it online. Assume you make $60,000 dollars over 2 years, performing only minor maintenance tasks occasionally.

One way to look at it: That's $2,500 per month in income.

Another way: That's $60,000 for one month of work.

Scenario 2:

Perform a large task for a company charging them $12,000 and promising to deliver it in a month. Depending on the work being delivered, that's not necessarily an unreasonable cost.

One way to look at it: That's paying $12,000 for $12,000 in value

Another way: That's approximately a rate of $75 per hour.

A company paying an employee $12,000 every month for developing software is probably unreasonable. A consultant, contractor, or self-employed entrepreneur making that money for a one-off job may not be unreasonable.

ryanackley• 13 years ago

Awesome project idea but it seemed like this was just on the front page 3 or 4 days ago.

drbawb2• 13 years ago

You're absolutely right, this was on the front page.

I think it's worth nothing though: this is an update: when it was on the front page it still needed backers. -- Now the project has met it's goal, and the author has added some stretch goals.

I personally think that it's reasonable to post an update and stir up more interest for the newly defined stretch goals.

Maybe some potential backers will be more interested now that they see the project has met it's goal?

espadrine• 13 years ago

> I think it's worth nothing though

You're harsh.

mooreds2• 13 years ago

Sorry, didn't see it up on the front page. I was actually surprised when the submission went through, this seems like a hackernews dream project (js + git + open source + crowdfunding).

JS Git

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