Redis之父的“退役”感言

Redis之父Antirez今早发布了一篇文章，题为《The end of the Redis adventure》。多年以前深入学习过Redis，这个最流行的缓存解决方案。当时惊叹于其近乎“变态”的性能表现，简直就是一个性能猛兽。而更令人印象深刻的是，在优异的外在表现背后，其代码质量也同样优秀。当年又不少的文章和书籍，都是关于Redis源码解析的。因为工作的缘故，我也写了不少文章，对Redis这个好产品还是有些怀念的。

出于这些缘由，今天特意仔细读了一下Redis之父的这篇博客。文章虽然不长，但有的地方还是触动到了我。下面就简单地整理了一下，主要是前面几段的内容。原文地址：http://antirez.com/news/133。

When I started the Redis project more than ten years ago I was in one of the most exciting moments of my career. My co-founder and I had successfully launched two of the major web 2.0 services of the Italian web. In order to make them scalable we had to invent many new concepts, that were already known in the field most of the times, but we didn’t know, nor we cared to check. Problem? Let’s figure out a solution. We wanted to solve problems but we wanted, even more, to have fun. This was the playful environment where Redis was born.

十多年前，Redis之父因为碰到了一个建站时的问题，于是跟同伴一起寻找解决方案，但更重要的是，寻找乐趣。

But now Redis is, incredibly, one of the main parts of so many things. And year after year my work changed from building this thing to making sure that it was also as useful as possible, as reliable as possible. And in recent years, what I do every day changed so much that most of my attention is spent in checking what other developers tell me about the Redis code, how to improve it, the changes it requires to be more correct or faster or more secure. However I never wanted to be a software maintainer.

当Redis逐渐流行开来，Redis之父的角色也跟着改变了。从原来的单纯构建东西，变成了让其尽可能地有用而可靠。每天他都从其他开发者那听取意见，然而他的本心却并非想成为一个维护者。

I write code in order to express myself, and I consider what I code an artifact, rather than just something useful to get things done. I would say that what I write is useful just as a side effect, but my first goal is to make something that is, in some way, beautiful. In essence, I would rather be remembered as a bad artist than a good programmer. Now I’m asked more and more, by the circumstances created by a project that became so important, to express myself less and to maintain the project more. And this is indeed exactly what Redis needs right now. But this is not what I want to do, and I stretched myself enough during the past years.

这一段应该是我最想细说的，有很重要的两个观点我是很赞同的：

1. 活着就是为了表达：我以前并没有意识到这一点，以为自己只是想不留痕迹。直到我看了电影《鸟人》，里面有句台词，那是“鸟人”叛逆的女儿生气时对他说的：“你厌恶博客写手，你鄙视推特，你甚至连一个脸书主页都没有。你根本不存在。你现在刷存在感，因为你怕自己什么都不是，就像我们所有人一样”。不管以何种方式，人活着就会想要表达。如Redis之父所说，他写代码就是为了表达自己。
2. 代码是艺术：写代码当时是为了执行，为了业务需求，为了解决问题。如果单纯这样想的话，写代码就完全成了一份差事。如Redis之父所说：“我把我的代码看成一件工艺品，而非为了完成某件事的有用的东西。有用只是附属的，我的第一目标是创造美的东西。我宁愿作为一个糟糕的艺术家而被人记住，也不想当一个好的程序员”。

现在Redis需要的正是这种“有用”，但这并非他本意，所以挣扎多年后他决定退居幕后。

So, dear Redis community, today I’m stepping back as the Redis maintainer. My new position will be, on one side, an “ideas” person at Redis Labs, in order to provide inputs for new Redis possibilities: I’ll continue to be part of the Redis Labs advisory board. On the other hand however my hands will be free, and I’ll do something else, that could be writing code or not, who knows, I don’t want to make plans for now. However I’m very skeptical about me not writing more code in the future. It’s just too much fun

Redis之父即将成为一个普通的维护者，为未来发展提供一些想法和建议。同时，闲下来的双手很可能会继续把代码写下去。限于篇幅，接下来的几段都省略了，主要就是交代了接下来Redis的开发将如何管理，同时表达对后继者的信任，对支持者的感谢。总体来说，我个人还是很喜欢这篇短文的，欢迎大家前去读完整原文 ：）