I'm another competitor in this space -- in fact more a competitor to Jenkins than CircleCI in that we don't offer CI-as-a-service (if anyone's interested the details are in my profile).
I think you're unfair to Jenkins in a couple of ways:
1) It's not as hard to set up as you make out. If you want to see what it's really like for nothing to work out of the box then head to the pre-Jenkins (then Hudson) era when CruiseControl was king (and I mean no disrespect to CC, it was a groundbreaking project). I agree, though, that the overall UX leaves plenty to be desired, and indeed this is one way we compete with Jenkins.
2) The strength of Jenkins is support for a huge range of environments and tools, with contributions in the small from a massive user base. Part of the trade off for this flexibility is some extra complexity.
I gather CircleCI approaches this space from a different angle, by narrowing focus thus making a streamlined UX a lot easier. That's a fine approach, and I wish you great luck, but it's not a way to "vanquish" Jenkins because you won't be able to satisfy most of the Jenkins user base.
Our approach is somewhere in between, and the balance is our greatest challenge. We've spent a lot of effort focused on ease of setup, and even more on ease of ongoing maintenance (especially for large build farms). I don't expect we'll ever compete with Jenkins on pure flexibility, rather I think there is room for many competitors in this space. After all, everyone should be into CI!
I think you're unfair to Jenkins in a couple of ways:
1) It's not as hard to set up as you make out. If you want to see what it's really like for nothing to work out of the box then head to the pre-Jenkins (then Hudson) era when CruiseControl was king (and I mean no disrespect to CC, it was a groundbreaking project). I agree, though, that the overall UX leaves plenty to be desired, and indeed this is one way we compete with Jenkins.
2) The strength of Jenkins is support for a huge range of environments and tools, with contributions in the small from a massive user base. Part of the trade off for this flexibility is some extra complexity.
I gather CircleCI approaches this space from a different angle, by narrowing focus thus making a streamlined UX a lot easier. That's a fine approach, and I wish you great luck, but it's not a way to "vanquish" Jenkins because you won't be able to satisfy most of the Jenkins user base.
Our approach is somewhere in between, and the balance is our greatest challenge. We've spent a lot of effort focused on ease of setup, and even more on ease of ongoing maintenance (especially for large build farms). I don't expect we'll ever compete with Jenkins on pure flexibility, rather I think there is room for many competitors in this space. After all, everyone should be into CI!