Open Letter to Parse
I just read the news in New York Times and I really feel like shit right now. Parse is part of my life since 2013, before they were bought by Facebook, for every single day.
I had my first contact with the platform when I was fifteen years old: I’ve just finished my 3-month iOS Workshop and the truth is… I didn’t know shit. To train my skills, I’d create very simple apps, but one day I found Parse, where, without any knowledge of backend, I could simply build a decent app for the first time. I learned the concept of backend with Parse and since that day, I’m using the service a lot.
Every hackathon I’ve won, there was my Parse server, where everything could be set up in 5 minutes and I could quickly send push notifications without any problem. Actually, there’s quite an interesting story that happened with me:
One day at AngelHack 2015, our backend guy was implementing push notifications with Amazon Web Services, but after three hours of reading a really outdated documentation with wrong screenshots, he said “OK Lucas, use your Parse” — 5 minutes later, it was done. Simple like that.
Every hackathon or any event, I’d tell people on how Parse was an amazing platform and why they should use it. Now I’m really lost.
I didn’t write this post to try to get Parse back, but to thank everyone who made that possible, specially @parseHector, who worked there for a really long time, answering everyone’s questions, being active in the community and much more. You guys worked really hard and you made an amazing product that certainly touched many developers in a daily basis. Your demo apps are awesome, the documentation is, by far, one of the best, your staff is amazing and you guys did an amazing job.
Thank you for being part of my programming life for the past 2 and a half years and I’m sure you guys will create something as awesome as Parse was.
REST in Peace, Parse.
Best,
Lucas Farah
