March 8th 2013 04:09 pm
Celebrating 10 Years of Kettle Coding
Dear Kettle friends,
The other week Jens and I were wondering how long it had been since I first started coding the current version of Kettle. So I started a thorough computing forensics investigation leading to the discovery of a backup of the first ever version of Kettle.
The date that comes up from that backup is March 4th, 2003, just about 10 years ago. The development of Kettle started earlier with analyses documents (most probably lost but nothing much was actually lost if you know what I mean) and even a version written in C as that was the main programming language I used back then to get things done.
Java was at mainstream version 1.3 and 1.4 but lots of “Applets” still ran at 1.1 or 1.2, generics didn’t exist, computers had in general 1 CPU, 512MB RAM… and I had a book called something like “Java in 21 days” to teach me how to get going. From there it took another 2 and a half years, lots of re-factoring and lots of help to get to the open sourcing of version 2.2 in December 2005.
While going back to the beginning of Kettle’s history it’s easy to understate the importance of Pentaho. After all, of those 10 years of the current code-base, over 7 have been spent working with the rest of the Pentaho team to build the best data integration tool on the planet. Programming alone is fine but in general you get more things done in a team. It’s absolutely fantastic to see the whole team chip in alongside the community on things like bug fixing, builds, continuous integration, UI, design, plugins, website, forums, JIRA triage, product management, marketing, events, sales, …
Thank you all for making Kettle the awesome tool it is today and the incredible tool that Kettle5 will be.
Cheers,
Matt
9 Comments »
Danny Teok on 08 Mar 2013 at 17:57 #
As a fairly new user of kettle even though after almost 2 years of intensive use, I gotta say that Kettle actually rocks! Love it!
Curtis Boyden on 08 Mar 2013 at 18:38 #
Congratulations on 10 years of the best product ever!
I dream in Kettle.
Wayne Johnson on 08 Mar 2013 at 21:43 #
Matt,
So thankful to have been using it for the past 5 years…truly an amazing tool! Congrats,
Wayne
Samatar on 09 Mar 2013 at 0:45 #
10 year!!!! Waouw
Congratulations Matt
kettle est toujours là..de plus en plus fort
Samatar
Jortilles on 10 Mar 2013 at 9:38 #
Wow! ten years!!!
Thanks Matt for this great tool. My work is much better since i discovered kettle 4 years ago. I love it!
Contratulations!
Kaj Kandler on 12 Mar 2013 at 17:07 #
Congratulations Matt,
that is a remarkable mile stone. I’ll have a piece of cake today to honor your achievement and persistence.
I hope you enjoyed the journey and thanks for being an Open Source hero.
Would you mind compiling a version/release history for the product. I’d love to read it.
Kaj
stevens_ns on 13 Mar 2013 at 13:26 #
Been using Kettle since 2007, great product it’s such a dream to use. I can’t imagine integrations without it now.
Here’s to the next 10!
Yassine on 20 Mar 2013 at 11:05 #
Hi Matt,
Congratulation for a decade of well invested time into making kettle to what it is now!
be proud of your baby and keep the good work Matt!
Yassine
Ebiosca on 05 Apr 2013 at 0:22 #
Hi Matt,
Congrats for this 10 firts years!
I discovered Kettle in 2006 just few months after Pentaho’s fusion and I followed the growth during this years.
I just can say good job man and thanks a lot
Enric Biosca