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Python at Mozy.com

At my day job, I write code for a company called Berkeley Data Systems. (They found me through this blog, actually. It's been a good place to work.)

Our first product is free online backup at mozy.com. Our second beta release was yesterday; the obvious problems have been fixed, so I feel reasonably good about blogging about it.

Our back end, which is the most algorithmically complex part -- as opposed to fighting-Microsoft-APIs complex, as we have to in our desktop client -- is 90% in python with one C extension for speed. We (well, they, since I wasn't at the company at that point) initially chose Python for speed of development, and it's definitely fulfilled that expectation.

(It's also lived up to its reputation for readability, in that the Python code has had 3 different developers -- in serial -- with very quick ramp-ups in each case. Python's succinctness and and one-obvious-way-to-do-it philosophy played a big part in this.)

If you try it out, please note that after the beta period (my guess: at least a month) the "price" for mozy is that every so often we'll send you advertisements by email. (But we'll never sell your address to anyone else, and we promise not to allow any body-part-enlargement crap.) We recognize that some potential users may be turned off by this, and we will probably offer for-pay options in the future, but I don't have a time frame on when that might be.

Comments

Oscar Bonilla said…
It seems we're both doomed with fixing Win32 problems.

Look at this in my blog. I spent the last month doing win32 crap and I'm still not done.

Anyway, do you know anything about Hard Links in NTFS? I'm implementing a stat(2) that works because their POSIX stat(2) is so broken is not even funny ;-)
Jonathan Ellis said…
Sorry, I just write the python code. :)
Anonymous said…
i was very much annoyed that it is only after signing up when i was informed about the mozy software requiring winXP. this should at least be stated on the overview page.
Jonathan Ellis said…
Sorry about that. We're adding a "system requirements" section to the first stage of account signup so it's harder to miss. (Right now it's buried in the FAQ.)
Anonymous said…
You seem to be the only contact for Mozy. How do you report bugs(quirks)? eg: resizing "Mozy Files" dialog repositions "Show this box after every backup" checkbox incorrectly
Jonathan Ellis said…
The support address is the first item in the FAQ (https://mozy.com/faq.php).

(We're already working on the resize problem.)
Peter Floyd said…
Python is a powerful programming language which can be used in a variety of ways at Mozy.com. The site offers a wide range of services, including backing up and sharing files, and Python is particularly well-suited for this kind of work. Python is easy to learn and can be used in a variety of contexts, making it a popular choice for developers and system administrators. zum Lesen klicken
John Fei said…
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