Also, most people greatly underestimated how much work would it take.
There were at least five situations when someone said “okay, let me look at this, we only need to make a few small changes in the Reddit codebase, how difficult could that be?” and a few weeks later they admitted that they are running out of time and energy and they barely scratched the surface. And a few weeks later a new person came and said “okay, now let me look at this, because changing a few little things in the Reddit codebase cannot be that difficult...”
In other words, it was difficult to coordinate on doing a large project, because it was difficult to even believe that a large project was actually necessary.
(It went against common knowledge: “Don’t reinvent the wheel.” Reddit is a large modern debate site; how likely it is that their software is difficult to maintain, and cannot resist a single dedicated attacker?)
Also, most people greatly underestimated how much work would it take.
There were at least five situations when someone said “okay, let me look at this, we only need to make a few small changes in the Reddit codebase, how difficult could that be?” and a few weeks later they admitted that they are running out of time and energy and they barely scratched the surface. And a few weeks later a new person came and said “okay, now let me look at this, because changing a few little things in the Reddit codebase cannot be that difficult...”
In other words, it was difficult to coordinate on doing a large project, because it was difficult to even believe that a large project was actually necessary.
(It went against common knowledge: “Don’t reinvent the wheel.” Reddit is a large modern debate site; how likely it is that their software is difficult to maintain, and cannot resist a single dedicated attacker?)