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Does anybody else miss the style of Aphyr's older posts, with animated Barbie dolls and such mocking the product under scrutiny? Examples: https://aphyr.com/po

Does anybody else miss the style of Aphyr's older posts, with animated Barbie dolls and such mocking the product under scrutiny? Examples: https://aphyr.com/posts/317-jepsen-elasticsearch https://aphyr.com/posts/317-jepsen-elasticsearch https://aphyr.com/posts/284-jepsen-mongodb https://aphyr.com/posts/284-jepsen-mongodb I understand this analysis was paid for by Dgraph so GIFs and memes aren't appropriate... but I do miss them.

mberning 8y ago
No
aphyr 8y ago
Oh, I certainly took no shortage of flack for those early analyses, but I'm glad you appreciated them! Some of my clients have even expressed disappointment that my jepsen.io analyses for them weren't as snarky as the aphyr.com ones! It's a tough situation though--if I were to write snarky analyses, even for unpaid clients, it would raise the possibility that clients could pay for favorable treatment. So... I go through an extensive process, often involving weeks of review with my client and peers, to produce as accurate, professional, and neutral a report as I can. There's another aspect to this: now that I've established a reputation and people take my work seriously, I don't have to be snarky or aggressive to get attention drawn to these issues. And the DB landscape has changed a lot in the last five years! Engineers want to provide formalized safety guarantees. Vendors are taking these failure modes seriously instead of dismissing them as irrelevant! Since I'm getting paid, I can invest more time into making these analyses real collaborations with the vendors. So I see my role now as more about helping people reach their safety goals, and a little less about shaming folks for making systems that didn't live up to their claims. My other motivations--letting users know how to work with the databases they've chosen, and giving case studies to help other engineers test and improve their own systems, well, those are unchanged. :)
- kjeetgill 8y ago
  Thank you for all of your work. I dove into those posts at the start of my career and they've shaped how I think about my work tremendously. (Along with Brendan Gregg's work!) I still reread this and pass it around at least once our twice a year: https://aphyr.com/posts/313-strong-consistency-models https://aphyr.com/posts/313-strong-consistency-models It's dense and takes some time to digest but I consider it required reading for anyone working on or with distributed systems.
  - aphyr 8y ago
    Aw, thank you! :)
- clebio 8y ago
  > now that I've established a reputation and people take my work seriously, I don't have to be snarky or aggressive to get attention drawn to these issues. like the parent and others here, I've lamented this. I appreciate your considered reply. This callout, in particular, is something I hadn't accounted for, but it makes perfect sense (the general idea that "we're getting serious and our clients are serious now too, so posts have to be serious" is just sort of obvious, and still likely true). Cheers to fighting the good fight!
yoklov 8y ago
These are great, thanks, I hadn't seen them before.
rdxm 8y ago
maybe. as much as I enjoyed the old days, the really great aspect of Aphyr was the underlying engineering analysis as in data driven and disciplined. our profession could use more of this...

mberning 8y ago

aphyr 8y ago

Oh, I certainly took no shortage of flack for those early analyses, but I'm glad you appreciated them! Some of my clients have even expressed disappointment that my jepsen.io analyses for them weren't as snarky as the aphyr.com ones! It's a tough situation though--if I were to write snarky analyses, even for unpaid clients, it would raise the possibility that clients could pay for favorable treatment. So... I go through an extensive process, often involving weeks of review with my client and peers, to produce as accurate, professional, and neutral a report as I can. There's another aspect to this: now that I've established a reputation and people take my work seriously, I don't have to be snarky or aggressive to get attention drawn to these issues. And the DB landscape has changed a lot in the last five years! Engineers want to provide formalized safety guarantees. Vendors are taking these failure modes seriously instead of dismissing them as irrelevant! Since I'm getting paid, I can invest more time into making these analyses real collaborations with the vendors. So I see my role now as more about helping people reach their safety goals, and a little less about shaming folks for making systems that didn't live up to their claims. My other motivations--letting users know how to work with the databases they've chosen, and giving case studies to help other engineers test and improve their own systems, well, those are unchanged. :)

kjeetgill 8y ago
Thank you for all of your work. I dove into those posts at the start of my career and they've shaped how I think about my work tremendously. (Along with Brendan Gregg's work!) I still reread this and pass it around at least once our twice a year: https://aphyr.com/posts/313-strong-consistency-models https://aphyr.com/posts/313-strong-consistency-models It's dense and takes some time to digest but I consider it required reading for anyone working on or with distributed systems.
- aphyr 8y ago
  Aw, thank you! :)
clebio 8y ago
> now that I've established a reputation and people take my work seriously, I don't have to be snarky or aggressive to get attention drawn to these issues. like the parent and others here, I've lamented this. I appreciate your considered reply. This callout, in particular, is something I hadn't accounted for, but it makes perfect sense (the general idea that "we're getting serious and our clients are serious now too, so posts have to be serious" is just sort of obvious, and still likely true). Cheers to fighting the good fight!

yoklov 8y ago

These are great, thanks, I hadn't seen them before.

rdxm 8y ago

maybe. as much as I enjoyed the old days, the really great aspect of Aphyr was the underlying engineering analysis as in data driven and disciplined. our profession could use more of this...