Welcome to my first blog! Here’s why I’m calling it “Mark Baker, Tech Curmudgeon”.

I believe that distributed systems that work at Internet scale are extraordinarily difficult to build; much more difficult than is commonly believed, even amoungst those who know that it’s difficult. I believe that there are very few people on this planet who have the expertise necessary to architect such a system. Of course, the Web isn’t the only example, but it’s a great one because of what it can do (as compared to, say, email or FTP, which are limited in their capabilities).

So when the “next big thing” comes along, and it’s not developed by people who I know get how difficult it is, I’m naturally skeptical.

I’ll try not to offend anybody with my posts, but since my job is to be critical of others’ work, and people invariably put a lot of themselves into their work, this is going to be hard to achieve. But please know that it is not my intent to criticize any person or group of people, only to critique technology.