Redis之父Antirez今早發佈了一篇文章，題爲《The end of the Redis adventure》。多年以前深入學習過Redis，這個最流行的緩存解決方案。當時驚歎於其近乎“變態”的性能表現，簡直就是一個性能猛獸。而更令人印象深刻的是，在優異的外在表現背後，其代碼質量也同樣優秀。當年又不少的文章和書籍，都是關於Redis源碼解析的。因爲工作的緣故，我也寫了不少文章，對Redis這個好產品還是有些懷念的。
出於這些緣由，今天特意仔細讀了一下Redis之父的這篇博客。文章雖然不長，但有的地方還是觸動到了我。下面就簡單地整理了一下，主要是前面幾段的內容。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之父因爲碰到了一個建站時的問題，於是跟同伴一起尋找解決方案，但更重要的是，尋找樂趣。
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.
當Redis逐漸流行開來，Redis之父的角色也跟着改變了。從原來的單純構建東西，變成了讓其儘可能地有用而可靠。每天他都從其他開發者那聽取意見，然而他的本心卻並非想成爲一個維護者。
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.
這一段應該是我最想細說的，有很重要的兩個觀點我是很贊同的：
- 活着就是爲了表達：我以前並沒有意識到這一點，以爲自己只是想不留痕跡。直到我看了電影《鳥人》，裏面有句臺詞，那是“鳥人”叛逆的女兒生氣時對他說的：“你厭惡博客寫手，你鄙視推特，你甚至連一個臉書主頁都沒有。你根本不存在。你現在刷存在感，因爲你怕自己什麼都不是，就像我們所有人一樣”。不管以何種方式，人活着就會想要表達。如Redis之父所說，他寫代碼就是爲了表達自己。
- 代碼是藝術：寫代碼當時是爲了執行，爲了業務需求，爲了解決問題。如果單純這樣想的話，寫代碼就完全成了一份差事。如Redis之父所說：“我把我的代碼看成一件工藝品，而非爲了完成某件事的有用的東西。有用只是附屬的，我的第一目標是創造美的東西。我寧願作爲一個糟糕的藝術家而被人記住，也不想當一個好的程序員”。
現在Redis需要的正是這種“有用”，但這並非他本意，所以掙扎多年後他決定退居幕後。
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之父即將成爲一個普通的維護者，爲未來發展提供一些想法和建議。同時，閒下來的雙手很可能會繼續把代碼寫下去。限於篇幅，接下來的幾段都省略了，主要就是交代了接下來Redis的開發將如何管理，同時表達對後繼者的信任，對支持者的感謝。總體來說，我個人還是很喜歡這篇短文的，歡迎大家前去讀完整原文 ：）