The number of computer majors at universities has always waxed and waned with the rise and fall of technology companies, and right now computer science is having a heyday. This means that, anyway, most of computer science graduates are likely to be over at 2 years of code, and then turn to product management, and then the transition to the enterprise, business or business school, then to both the company’s middle management, 32 years old married, had two children, a son and a daughter, a dog, And a beautiful 2 story house.
For most people, being a programmer is a 9-to-5 job, a guaranteed six-figure salary to pay off high school fees, a means to an end, and no one is to blame for it. But for millions of programmers, good and bad, there is only one Monty Widenius.
Monty is a programming genius. At 19, he dropped out of Helsinki University of Technology to work full-time because there was nothing left to teach him at university. After coding all but one library on his own, at age 33, he launched MySQL, which became the world’s most popular open source database. At 55, he defied ageism and was still the best programmer in his company.
Monty was born in Helsinki in 1962 and bought his first personal computer in 1978 with money he earned laying asphalt during his summer vacation. Monty quickly realized that he was pretty good at writing code — things that were complicated for others were easy for him, and he was dedicated to his work. “Basically it’s like reading a really, really good book,” Monty says in a thick accent common among Swedish-speaking Finns. Or like playing a video game. You know that feeling when you start playing a game and bam, three hours go by? That’s what writing code feels like to me.”
While others ran off to parties, Monty stayed home and programmed. He knew the computer from the inside out. He pushed BASIC to its limits. “Schools don’t understand that [programming isn’t something like language or history],” Monty says. “It can’t be learned. So school is not enough. The best hacker is one in a million.
They gave all the time they could, 10 hours, 16 hours, every day, year after year. Most people don’t want to do that. Most people would rather have a good life.” In Monty’s view, good code is the kind that is written once and never needs to be touched again. It’s already optimized from a performance point of view, and you can keep enhancing it, but you never have to rewrite it.
By 1980, at the age of 17, Monty had become so addicted to programming that he needed to expand his computer’s memory from 8KB to 16KB. Since there were no shops in Finland to sell what he wanted, he got a boat and went to Allan Larsson’s computer shop in Sweden. Through Allan, Monty met David Axmark, and the three communicated over the years, helping each other on projects and occasionally collaborating. Together, they formed MySQL AB in 1995. Monty does the programming, and David and Allan do the rest.
Monty had been writing code for the precursor to MySQL since 1981 as a programmer for Tapio Laakso Oy, a Finnish company that he co-founded with Allan, and would use the same thing. However, it was not until 1995, after lobbying by Allan and David, that Monty decided to add an SQL layer to his writing. In October 1996, MySQL was finally released, and it was widely welcomed. MySQL is fast, reliable, and easy to learn, mainly because Monty has consistently incorporated feedback from customers over the years of development.
MySQL was originally designed to store and manage big data. If someone wants to keep track of different data points, they use databases with each other, which is something like Microsoft Excel. However, as data gets bigger and bigger, finding databases like Excel becomes much slower and less reliable. MySQL has the ability to store large amounts of data and return search results extremely quickly. ‘My’ comes from Monty’s daughter’s name, and ‘SQL’ stands for Structured Query Language, a Language for communicating with databases.
The decision to open source MySQL came in 1985 on another boat trip from Finland to Sweden, this time at an open source conference. “It didn’t take many minutes,” Monty says. We all want to give something back to the open source community. Even if someone tried to copy or steal our code, we don’t think we could make any less money than we do now.” Open source projects allow the developer community to help make software better, but the downside from a business perspective is that monetization is much harder.
To avoid this, Monty added a clause that would require a paid license if any enterprise used MySQL to make money. There were no restrictions in the MySQL code, but with this honor system MySQL was able to expand and start making money. “I think open source is a better way to develop software,” Monty says. But you still need to make enough money to hire people and start a company to compete with the closed-source community. MySQL is the first product to do that.”
Monty’s position at MySQL AB was CTO, and ctos are rarely programmed in most mature companies. Monty, however, never stopped, spending most of his time writing code. This (minimal management) approach causes many late stage startups to implode, but Monty’s unique culture at MySQL AB allows him to avoid the hassle of daily meetings (in fact, Monty doesn’t even accept agenda invitations), even as the company has grown to 550 people.
“I always hire people who are self-driven,” Monty says. So I don’t have to tell them too much. And open source means that you have the open source community, people will give you code, and you can look at the quality of that code, how they interact with the community, how they communicate with you, what questions they ask, and it’s very easy to tell if someone is good or bad in those situations. It’s hard to know how good the coder is in an interview.”
MySQL’s success is the result of a collaborative effort between CTO Monty and CEO Marten Mickos. Both are very capable and very important to the company, but in different ways. Monty is a technologist who focuses on employees producing the best possible code. Marten is a company builder, focused on delivering things and helping the team grow. It was their joint vision that created MySQL. But in a company that doesn’t have free laundry, free lunches or standing desks, it’s Monty’s personal magnetism that attracts talent. Monty is not a gregarious fundraiser, people-pleaser, game theorist, or professional communicator. He could write code, and he could write it well. According to Monty, earning the respect of developers is simple: “You do what they do, and you do it better.”
Monty’s advice for programmers is to get involved in the open source community and spend some time on personal projects (” I’ve developed hundreds of programs over the years: MySQL is the most used one, but the rest are just for me.” ). He warns that changing the environment and code base will mean that even the best programmers will have to learn a lot. After Sun was acquired by Oracle, Monty founded MariaDB, a community edition offset of MySQL, developed by a team made up largely of MySQL team members and using the same official language: “broken English.” Many of MySQL’s ardent open source believers followed Monty to MariaDB. MariaDB is more developer-oriented, allowing for things like patching by outsiders, and is the default database in many Linux distributions.
Monty’s commitment to open source and developers is strong — OpenOcean was originally founded by Monty with his MySQL holdings with a mission to invest in developer-driven, technology-deep products. He still hosts developer lunches at his home in Helsinki, and soon OpenOcean will launch a Slack channel where developers can ask Monty questions directly. Monty’s contribution to creating the selfless image of the open source community over the decades is indisputable. But much of the credit for this should go to the thousands of anonymous programmers and hackers whose time and skill enabled open source to flourish and who ensured that the revolution continued.
Original: https://blog.openocean.vc/founder-stories-a-hackers-hacker-6d5054c90564