I just can't get over the fact that this starts with
> This is a big change, but it’s not an “Our Incredible Journey” post
and then never, nowhere, at all, makes clear that the post means "We're shutting down Glitch". At least the "incredible journey" posts are clear about that, somehow this here is even worse. It suggests that they're just shutting some small part of it down but actually if I read it right (and the comments here) it actually means they're shutting the whole platform down but might someday want to try and do something else with the name and the userbase.
I simply don't understand why people write like this. What's the benefit of trying to fool your userbase into thinking that maybe not that much is changing when in fact everything is? Who wins when, the day after they pull the last plug, lots of people email them in panic, because they hadn't realized that "important changes" means "we'll delete everything"?
Yeah, one of their former eng managers said the same
> The post carefully avoids calling this an “Our Incredible Journey” moment, but removing project hosting and user profiles is the end of Glitch as a platform. What’s left is essentially a redirect service with some backlinks (hosted on the Fastly Edge Compute Platform™, naturally). You can’t spin the removal of the core product as anything other than what it is: a shutdown.
It's a bit ironic coming from Anil, who has quite a following on social media due to "calling it like it is" when big tech or VC culture does something rotten or self-serving.
The doublespeak and evasiveness in this "incredible journey" post is exactly the sort of thing he'd typically criticize!
I realize now I had internalized a very powerful lesson about being human, when I grew confused about how he talked about Glitch, versus how he talked about other companies.
Ultimately the CEO jobs involving 10 figures of investments are selected before the company is built, for some intersection of self marketability, ability to market others...and most importantly, being willing to do anything to go with the flow.
Yes, they tried to avoid the cliche by pointing at the cliche, but they weren't able to refute Our Incredible Journey.
Though, this was a real product, with almost 10 years of operation; very few products last this long, and the product wasn't immediately shuttered after the acquisition, so it is unfair to categorize them into the same OIJ bucket.
$30M Series A by Tiger in 2018, acq by Fastly in 2022 for undisclosed price, shutdown in 2025. Fastly is a CDN and edge network. Glitch was used by Fastly for “internal training” and “internal sales tools” (kinda?), a far cry from “fullstack application platform in the edge”.
is it me or does it feel like the american dream is quickly becoming "work super hard developing a new product that meets people's needs, then get bought out and shut down by one of the supergiant orgs that owns everything"?
You’d have to convince someone to say no to a multimillion dollar VC check, bootstrap themselves financially (and often on “bread and water” levels of available money for their project), and be willing to potentially run or be at least somewhat responsible for whatever they build for potentially decades.
An entity would have to really want to do all that for the “American Dream” to happen.
This is why civil design software has not meaningfully improved in 20 years and is indistinguishable from its state 10 years ago. We’re living in a Dark Age. We just don’t realize it.
The "American Dream" is really just a less socialist sounding way of describing a post-WWII economic structure where unionized labour (manufacturing, ports, trades and teachers) had bargaining power to hold corporations and elected officials to account. That and a housing sector where government-backed mortgages hadn't yet been turned into a casino by Wall Street.
> We’re thinking through what’s next. I’m really interested in how we can look at all the other amazing creation and app experiences out there (I really love stuff like Val Town and Fly.io and Deno and Netlify, etc.) and bring all those together for easily making and remixing new apps. Will take a bit to figure that out.
They're shutting Gitch down. Anil's just trying to be high-minded and optimistic without saying anything specific. I'll be surprised if they do anything new with Glitch.
This absolutely is a "Our Incredible Journey" story, but just with a good migration off-ramp.
I'm similarly lost as GP, and even reading this, I feel like I'm missing something.
If HN said they're disabling new submissions and comments, that'd effectively mean they're closing the site, and would probably say that outright.
But Glitch aren't saying they are shutting down, but they're removing the feature that I thought made Glitch a thing. So nothing is left, yet they continue? Is this a 180 pivot or? Are there other features that will still be usable?
Glitch has been a key piece of the A-Frame community (open source project I maintain) for almost a decade. I'm super thankful to the team! So many people started programming and had first steps in game and 3d graphics development with Glitch.
It's sad to see it go. I was always somehow worried. They had an awesome and super generous free tier. You don’t even need to create an account! Unfortunately, it looks they couldn't make the numbers work.
As someone who has been using glitch.com because of A-Frame and was teaching students to also use them together I am really sad by the news. It was a great thing to see students who had no experience with programming to create a virtual spaces in under an hour and after few more lessons using A-Frame in a creative way that I wouldn't even thought off.
I guess I would also like to thank you @dmarcos for keeping A-Frame alive. My especially fond memory of it was during Covid lockdowns when my friend reached out to me that he had students of Art University feeling pretty bummed because they weren't able to do a end of a year physical exhibit and if I had any ideas to do a simple site to show the works. What we went with instead was to create a virtual gallery that evolved also in to place where people could stream live performances through the internet and even had a premiere of a CD of a band done there (https://vimeo.com/428814586).
Not that I'm aware of. I like glitch because the dev experience is the same as working on a local machine: a list of files, text editor, viewer. Anything you learn on glitch transfers directly to local development.
Codepen, jsfiddle abstract away too much with the UI and different panels. You're coding their way.
I’m not a fan of those overly sweet, corporate-style messages that try to sugarcoat the truth: Glitch was simply too good to last, and you’re losing money...
That said, my only real complaint is this: if you knew the situation wasn’t financially sustainable, you could have at least announced it a year in advance—not overnight.
Sad, one of the first of its kind. Created a bunch of one-off tools for friends and colleagues on glitch, but could see why it didn't really take off.
For me I switched to other platforms like codesandbox, replit because the editor UX wasn't great for a long time. I get wanting the simplicity angle but having poor hints/autocomplete/etc is a hard sell for writing code.
I love the brass of putting "Our Incredible Journey" posts on blast right up top and then writing a post that even less clearly explains if they are shutting down entirely, why they are doing so, or what is going on.
Yes! It's exactly what it says it's not, an Incredible Journey post, from Anil, who is a laser-sharp writer.
I kept reading because I assumed they were going to - idk open source it or allow you to host Glitch apps elsewhere - but nope, it's just a straight shutdown announcement. What have I got wrong?
I'd assume there is some obfuscation required by owners or whatever pending a change of ownership, something like that?
Anyhow, RIP, if the internet has taught me anything it's that we can't have nice things for more than about 10 years.
This is one of those classic examples of awful communication dressed up as some kind of “good news everyone!” treatise on a founders personal feelings while being clear as molasses about reality.
Readit News
> This is a big change, but it’s not an “Our Incredible Journey” post
and then never, nowhere, at all, makes clear that the post means "We're shutting down Glitch". At least the "incredible journey" posts are clear about that, somehow this here is even worse. It suggests that they're just shutting some small part of it down but actually if I read it right (and the comments here) it actually means they're shutting the whole platform down but might someday want to try and do something else with the name and the userbase.
I simply don't understand why people write like this. What's the benefit of trying to fool your userbase into thinking that maybe not that much is changing when in fact everything is? Who wins when, the day after they pull the last plug, lots of people email them in panic, because they hadn't realized that "important changes" means "we'll delete everything"?
> The post carefully avoids calling this an “Our Incredible Journey” moment, but removing project hosting and user profiles is the end of Glitch as a platform. What’s left is essentially a redirect service with some backlinks (hosted on the Fastly Edge Compute Platform™, naturally). You can’t spin the removal of the core product as anything other than what it is: a shutdown.
https://keith.is/blog/the-end-of-glitch-even-though-they-say...
It's a bit ironic coming from Anil, who has quite a following on social media due to "calling it like it is" when big tech or VC culture does something rotten or self-serving.
The doublespeak and evasiveness in this "incredible journey" post is exactly the sort of thing he'd typically criticize!
Very strange situation.
Though, this was a real product, with almost 10 years of operation; very few products last this long, and the product wasn't immediately shuttered after the acquisition, so it is unfair to categorize them into the same OIJ bucket.
https://blog.glitch.com/post/my-last-day-at-fastly/
https://www.fastly.com/blog/fastly-announces-acquisition-of-...
You are probably spending too much time on a discussion forum sponsored by a startup accelerator if you think that defines the American dream, though.
An entity would have to really want to do all that for the “American Dream” to happen.
Deleted Comment
It's going to get worse.
> We’re thinking through what’s next. I’m really interested in how we can look at all the other amazing creation and app experiences out there (I really love stuff like Val Town and Fly.io and Deno and Netlify, etc.) and bring all those together for easily making and remixing new apps. Will take a bit to figure that out.
This absolutely is a "Our Incredible Journey" story, but just with a good migration off-ramp.
If HN said they're disabling new submissions and comments, that'd effectively mean they're closing the site, and would probably say that outright.
But Glitch aren't saying they are shutting down, but they're removing the feature that I thought made Glitch a thing. So nothing is left, yet they continue? Is this a 180 pivot or? Are there other features that will still be usable?
It's sad to see it go. I was always somehow worried. They had an awesome and super generous free tier. You don’t even need to create an account! Unfortunately, it looks they couldn't make the numbers work.
Codepen, jsfiddle abstract away too much with the UI and different panels. You're coding their way.
To quote a response from their forum: https://support.glitch.com/t/discussion-thread-project-hosti...
--- start quote ---
I’m not a fan of those overly sweet, corporate-style messages that try to sugarcoat the truth: Glitch was simply too good to last, and you’re losing money...
That said, my only real complaint is this: if you knew the situation wasn’t financially sustainable, you could have at least announced it a year in advance—not overnight.
--- end quote ---
I kept reading because I assumed they were going to - idk open source it or allow you to host Glitch apps elsewhere - but nope, it's just a straight shutdown announcement. What have I got wrong?
I'd assume there is some obfuscation required by owners or whatever pending a change of ownership, something like that?
Anyhow, RIP, if the internet has taught me anything it's that we can't have nice things for more than about 10 years.
This is one of those classic examples of awful communication dressed up as some kind of “good news everyone!” treatise on a founders personal feelings while being clear as molasses about reality.