Me, Chicago Boss, and the path to 1.0

[Evan Miller]

Hi everyone,

I have some good news and some bad news that I'd like to share with the community.

First, the good news: Chicago Boss now has a full-time employee! Zach Kessin (author of "Building Web Applications with Erlang" and host of the Mostly Erlang podcast) will be working over the next 6 months to bring CB to 1.0. He's new to CB but has already done some great work improving CB's error reporting, adding specs and tests, and refactoring the code base. I'm looking forward to seeing all his contributions in the next few months.

Zach's work is being sponsored by Dmitry Polyanovsky, a long-time CB community member and contributor of many patches. Dmitry will be working on improving the documentation and website, and will be setting milestones and guiding Zach's efforts for the next few framework releases. I've been a fan of Dmitry's contributions, and having talked to him over the last few months, I think he knows exactly what CB needs to reach maturity.

And now, the bad news: it's been a fun ride, but I am planning to retire from Erlang and Chicago Boss. But don't cry for me: I've been having success with my desktop software business (wizardmac.com) and realized that going forward I will no longer have the time to dedicate to both CB and Wizard. (Incidentally I also left grad school a couple months ago to focus on Wizard.) Finished software products require a ton of focus and work, and I just don't have the mental capacity to manage two projects at once. I wish there were more hours in the day!

I've given this a lot of thought, and I think it's probably the right time in CB's trajectory for me to start transitioning out anyway. My specialty is trying crazy ideas and getting them to work. (It's amazing the number of times people laughed at me when I told them I was working on a Rails-like web framework in Erlang!) CB has been a wonderful playground for me to try out my ideas, whether it was with the template system, BossDB, the compiler hacks, BossMQ… well, you get the idea :D. And I've loved being part of a community that has appreciated my work and made countless improvements and contributions to it.

But at this point, CB doesn't need any more crazy ideas -- it needs stability! Tests, specs, documentation, QA, error messages, deployment tools, that sort of thing. I guess it's selfish of me, but these things tend to make my eyes glaze over. That's part of the reason CB has been stalled out at version 0.8 the last year or two.

So, taking all this together, I've been busy taking steps to hand off my Erlang projects to folks who I trust can guide them to maturity. Dmitry & Zach will be shepherding CB to 1.0, and Andreas Stenius will be taking the reins over ErlyDTL. (Andreas, by the way, has been doing FANTASTIC work to merge the Zotonic fork of ErlyDTL back into mainline.) My "retirement" has been in the works for a couple months, and I waited until I knew CB would be in good hands to make today's announcement.

Finally: transitions are tough, and I will be relying on YOU the community to keep CB's core values alive: a no-nonsense web framework with an open and welcoming community. Zach has been very productive already, but he is still figuring out "how we do things around here", so I'd really appreciate it if you all will take time to answer his questions and weigh in on any proposed changes.

Over the next few months I'll still be making myself available to answer questions, offer guidance, and resolve any impasses. But to be honest, I think between the community and the 1.0 leadership, you guys won't really need me anyway :D

Well, that's it for news. Gosh, it's been almost 6 years since I wrote the first line of code that later became Chicago Boss. Working with Erlang has been an education in itself, and bouncing ideas off of so many smart people has been a unique privilege. I still believe Erlang and CB are the right way to build fast websites, and with ARM servers and devices on the horizon, there's a ton of potential ahead. But as for me -- it's time to climb other mountains!

Thanks again for your patience, support, and continuing contributions. I'm proud of the framework and community we've built together, and look forward to watching it grow and flourish without me. Feel free to ping me with any questions, and of course give me a shout if you're ever in Chicago.

Cheers!!!

Evan

--
Evan Miller
http://www.evanmiller.org/

[Karmen Blake]

Thanks for all the hard work in getting CB off the ground (and much more). 

When I worked at Apple (a couple years ago), I needed a small intranet web app to put some ideas together. I used Erlang and needed a web framework. I chose CB.

Worked great for my pet project. Others were surprised I could do such "web" things in Erlang. :)

Good luck to you in your future adventures! It's good to see you've left the project in good hands.

[chan sisowath]

Thanks Evan for that awesome web framework,
i started to watch this little web framework a couple year ago when i planned to move to erlang technology, just read and erlang book was not enough, by digging into your "crazy ideas" was a great exercise, i m still learning by the way.
everywhere i work i try to evangelize about Erlang and ChicagoBoss, my previous employer in shanghai use CB for their web now, http://www.yunio.com, i was dedicated for the backend storage but at least i had time to work a bit on CB version of the front-end before i quit them for new adventure, in my new job i push erlang & ChicagoBoss as the main technology, i should work on it. The project is in good hand, welcome to Zach.

Wish you good time in your new adventures.

chan (mihawk)

2013/12/19 Karmen Blake <dude...@gmail.com>

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[Jose Luis Gordo Romero]

Thanks Evan and good luck with your projects, I learned a lot with your code and your "ways" to solve complex problems!

Thanks Dmitry & Zach, this year has been busy with non-cb-related projects but I expect be back to help soon.

--

Jose Luis Gordo Romero

@jgordor - http://www.freemindsystems.com

2013/12/19 chan sisowath <chan.s...@gmail.com>

[Zachary Kessin]

Hi Everyone,

First of all I need to thank Evan for getting CB off the ground, and
Dmitry for getting me started on this project.

My main goals for the next few months are getting the features that
are already in CB rock solid. That means that I am going to be adding
tests with
eunit, Common Test and QuickCheck. It already passes dialyzer.

I am also going to be working on the docs.

If anyone wants to talk to me please IM me via skype or google chat. I
am also sometimes on IRC. look for "ZachInIsrael".

--Zach

Zach Kessin
Mostly Erlang Podcast
Twitter: @zkessin
Skype: zachkessin

[Mike Bonar]

Good luck with the new project, Evan!  I don't think you realize just how ahead of our time your crazy idea was!  I can't imagine using a framework now without all these wonderful components.

Cheers,
Mike

[jackiedong]

Hey, Evan:

  Thank you very much for bringing this awesome web framework into Erlang world. 

  Wish you have a more brilliant future.

-Best Regards-

-Jackie-

在 2013年12月19日星期四UTC+8上午5时22分45秒，Evan Miller写道：

[Igor Clark]

Just wanted to add to the chorus, thanks so much Evan for all your amazing work. CB really is something different; it takes radical approaches to some tough problems but balances them with the tough pragmatic attitude necessary to make it work in the real world.

Some of the new stuff sounds amazing, and I'm really excited to see the new steps & developments leading up 1.0.

Cheers and very best of luck :-D

Igor

[David Welton]

I wanted to say thanks as well. Having Chicago Boss around has given
us the chance to use Erlang in a cool project that I hope to be able
to share with this group at some point in the future.

Beyond the technology, I also want to commend Evan for doing his part
to create a good community, which is a trickier task than simply
writing some nice code, in many ways. Evan has been very responsive,
attentive to ideas to change CB, helpful with comments and critiques
of code, and in general has made interaction with this group very
pleasant at a personal level.

Thanks!
--
David N. Welton

http://www.welton.it/davidw/

http://www.dedasys.com/

[Peter Yuen]

Sad to hear the bad news, but good luck Evans!

[Lloyd R. Prentice]

Thank you, Evan, for your outstanding contribution to the Erlang world. It's one thing to write innovative software and another thing entirely to to attract and cultivate a vibrant, self sustaining community around it. You've done both through rare good-humored leadership. I have no doubt that you are destined toward boundless success in your new venture.

Lloyd R. Prentice

Sent from my iPad

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[Bryan Hunt]

Nice project, thanks Evan!