> My background is in adtech, which is a unique mix of massive scale, dynamic logic, strict latency requirements, and geographical distribution. I've built complete ad platforms by myself for 3 different companies now so I can confidently say that this is not a difficult scenario. It's a ready-heavy content site with very little interactivity or complexity to each page and can be made much simpler, faster and cheaper.
I don't dispute this or your credentials. You've built critical systems in a space where it was a core of the business. If given time, and resources, I have no doubt you could build a custom solution to their problem that was more efficient.
Unstated in this is the type of business MangaDex is, which I have the following assumptions about. I don't think it's unfair to assume that we're mostly on the same page here:
- Small to mid size, at most
- Small engineering team. Need to develop, deploy, support, and maintain solutions.
- Lacks deep systems expertise, or is unable to attract talent that has that expertise ($)
These characteristics are very common in our space. To solve their technical problems, most of the time, they reach for an open source solution (after examining the alternatives like a service).
Now the question is given those constraints, and their other business requirements, how do they best optimize for dimensions they care about? Everything is a trade-off. Everyone who builds knows this. It's unkind to pretend this is a purely technical exercise. And after reading their article, it's obvious they know some of trade-offs they're making, so it's unkind to suggest a naive solution that does nothing but make you feel smarter. I'm not saying you did the above, but some of these comments are outrageous.
I don't dispute this or your credentials. You've built critical systems in a space where it was a core of the business. If given time, and resources, I have no doubt you could build a custom solution to their problem that was more efficient.
Unstated in this is the type of business MangaDex is, which I have the following assumptions about. I don't think it's unfair to assume that we're mostly on the same page here:
- Small to mid size, at most
- Small engineering team. Need to develop, deploy, support, and maintain solutions.
- Lacks deep systems expertise, or is unable to attract talent that has that expertise ($)
These characteristics are very common in our space. To solve their technical problems, most of the time, they reach for an open source solution (after examining the alternatives like a service).
Now the question is given those constraints, and their other business requirements, how do they best optimize for dimensions they care about? Everything is a trade-off. Everyone who builds knows this. It's unkind to pretend this is a purely technical exercise. And after reading their article, it's obvious they know some of trade-offs they're making, so it's unkind to suggest a naive solution that does nothing but make you feel smarter. I'm not saying you did the above, but some of these comments are outrageous.