Check out Ari Balogh's geek makeover! In jumping from stiffly corporate VeriSign to stiffly corporate-but-trying-pretend-otherwise Yahoo, the CTO ditched the '70s mustache and switched to an open-necked sweater for a keynote at Web 2.0 Expo. The upshot: Yahoo is "rewiring" itself to be more "open." As with Balogh's sweater, those who use this openness to get a closer look may get frightened. Yahoo's software certainly requires rewiring, but putting a new layer on top of it and inviting software developers to build applications using Yahoo services won't solve the problem. As one ex-Yahoo put it to me, vast swaths of Yahoo are built on "spaghetti code," poorly maintained and poorly understood software that's prone to breakage. Opening this up to developers may lead to all kinds of surprises, but not the kind Yahoo's tech-indifferent executives hope for. (Photo by Dan Farber)

2:40 PM on Thu Apr 24 2008
By Owen Thomas
882 views
9 comments

Comments

Bornean at 03:38 PM on 04/24/08
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Yeah, I think one of the reasons that Microsoft took so long with Vista (and this is just a theory) is because MS wanted to avoid spider code so they could deploy faster later on. That's why Windows 7 is coming so fast. True innovation can happen faster now.

Microsoft would take all the pomp and frills out of Yahoo and make it a well-oiled machine. I don't care if Yahoo! is all .net and silverlight a year from now, just as long as the devs can work and don't have room to make any excuses.

Business is about results.
ballmer at 08:58 PM on 04/24/08
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@Bornean - that's a total pile of bullshit you piece of shit microsoft PR shill
Winston Smith at 10:12 PM on 04/24/08
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@ballmer: grow up you whiny bitch
raincoaster at 10:55 PM on 04/24/08
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Connectedness Index: 337
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So, is this how Valleywag works? After a certain number of comments everybody's periods synch up so they're all PMSing at the same time?
bloggerman at 12:45 AM on 04/25/08
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Maybe Ari is smart enough to figure this out. Valley Wag did, so how hard could it be?

There might be an effort to deal with Yahoo's "spaghetti" coding. Or some other way of dealing with the problems. You wouldn't necessary hear about it. If you did, you'd likely dismiss the whole effort as you do almost everything Yahoo does as hopeless, inadequate, etc. etc. etc.

It's really hard to take some of what's said about Microsoft seriously these days after dealing with Vista. It's not so much an OS as a POS. If they take over Yahoo it could be a massive train wreck that leaves Sergey, Larry and the head vampire over at the Goog in an even more dominant position.

None of the analysts or bloggers seem to think much of this through. They see dollar signs from a merger, and they're probably all using Macs.
desmondhaynes at 03:55 AM on 04/25/08
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The heady plans are smart but have come too late.
-Des
[techwatch.reviewk.com]
Yahood! at 12:45 PM on 04/25/08
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Since 26-Feb-08 does he even care? [uk.finance.yahoo.com]
bloggerman at 07:18 PM on 04/25/08
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Ah yes, the "too little too late" dismissal.

Thanks Desmond. I had forgotten to mention that.

Hey Owen, ever thought of actually asking Ari about what he's doing to deal with the "spaghetti" coding problem? You might actually get an interesting answer. Yahoo's being a lot more open about its plans lately to show that it's got a good viable non-Microsoft way forward.

Might be a good way to show your journalistic chops. And inform your readers.
matto at 10:41 AM on 04/26/08
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@bloggerman: redo all the existing architecture in Ruby on Rails! That will surely be a Yahoo! Salvation.