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Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

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Re: Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

#11

Post by astrofinch »

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale?

Development speed is way more important than scalability. Like Paul Graham says, the vast majority of startups fail because they make a product no one wants or because they never launch a product in the first place. Faster software development means you figure out if your product is a dud faster, and you're less likely to run out of morale before you've got something substantial.

I've been working on my current (unreleased) project with Django and jQuery on Linux for about a month. Here's all of the stuff I've made use of from the Django, jQuery, and Python communities:

http://code.google.com/p/django-command-extensions/

http://south.aeracode.org/

http://github.com/dcramer/django-ratings

http://github.com/pydanny/django-uni-form

http://github.com/robhudson/django-debug-toolbar

http://github.com/alex/django-ajax-validation

http://fabfile.org/

http://orkans-tmp.22web.net/star_rating/

http://jquery.malsup.com/form/

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/ScrollTo

http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/

http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/

There's no way I could ever use a niche framework after having drunk this reusable code kool-aid.

Even if Django weren't scalable, if I really was on the road to being the next Facebook or Youtube, there'd be plenty of time and money to rewrite in something that could scale.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

#12

Post by starkfist »

astrofinch wrote: post #11

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale? Development speed is way more important than scalability. Like Paul Graham says, the vast majority of startups fail because they make a product no one wants or because they never launch a product in the first place. Faster software development means you figure out if your product is a dud faster, and you're less likely to run out of morale…

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale?

yeah - friendster.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

#13

Post by barnaby »

We use Django, Linux (Ubuntu for both servers and developer machies), PostGIS database, memcache, Apache, etc. and of course Eclipse, Trac, etc. etc.

Haven't reached 1M hits per day yet, but I'm about to experience a bit of preemptive load testing to find out where the initial problem spots may be.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

#14

Post by [deleted] »

starkfist wrote: post #12
astrofinch wrote: post #11

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale? Development speed is way more important than scalability. Like Paul Graham says, the vast majority of startups fail because they make a product no one wants or because they never launch a product in the first place. Faster software development means you figure out if your product is a dud faster, and you're less likely to run out of morale…

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale? yeah - friendster.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

#15

Post by byoung2 »

starkfist wrote: post #12
astrofinch wrote: post #11

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale? Development speed is way more important than scalability. Like Paul Graham says, the vast majority of startups fail because they make a product no one wants or because they never launch a product in the first place. Faster software development means you figure out if your product is a dud faster, and you're less likely to run out of morale…

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale? yeah - friendster.

I remember the early days when you couldn't log in to Friendster for hours because the servers were overloaded!

Re: Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

#16

Post by SkyMarshal »

starkfist wrote: post #12
astrofinch wrote: post #11

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale? Development speed is way more important than scalability. Like Paul Graham says, the vast majority of startups fail because they make a product no one wants or because they never launch a product in the first place. Faster software development means you figure out if your product is a dud faster, and you're less likely to run out of morale…

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale? yeah - friendster.

Did they attribute their performance problems to tech stack or architecture? Or did they ever say?

Re: Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

#17

Post by rodh257 »

mkramlich wrote: post #5
jbr wrote: post #2

Rails, node.js, redis, resque, mysql, nginx, unicorn, monit, solr, ubuntu. I don't think that the technology stack matters that much, though.

while I agree that some of the strongest techniques for scaling are available on many platforms/stacks, you will generally have the easiest time of it on a Linux stack rather than say Windows. Only at the thousand-foot perspective does the stack not matter. But on the ground, where the devil is in the details, the stack matters quite a bit when it comes to what toys are available to you, what resources, what options.

Stack Overflow claims that by running a Windows stack they save money compared to a LAMP stack due to its better performance (MVC2,SQL2008) outweighing the initial cost. I think they talked about this in their Google Tech Talk (Joel Spolsky).

Re: Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

#18

Post by astrofinch »

starkfist wrote: post #12
astrofinch wrote: post #11

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale? Development speed is way more important than scalability. Like Paul Graham says, the vast majority of startups fail because they make a product no one wants or because they never launch a product in the first place. Faster software development means you figure out if your product is a dud faster, and you're less likely to run out of morale…

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale? yeah - friendster.

Friendster is actually in decent shape today. So inability to scale didn't kill them--it just dealt them a very substantial blow.

Twitter would be an example of a startup that experienced severe scaling issues and still ended up on top.

Know any others?

Re: Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

#19

Post by alnayyir »

cageface wrote: post #10
patio11 wrote: post #3

Scaling is more about sound architectural decisions than it is about stack. (And it is more about "not a problem" than it is about architecture, because a gigantic proportion of all startups will never have any scaling problem to speak of, and the majority of the remainder will be able to solve theirs in fairly boring fashions.) Almost all startups would be better served by playing around in their technology of choic…

Engineers sometimes remind me of the two guys that used to live next to me that spent every day tinkering with the engine of their Camaro out in the garage. I'm sure it was pretty tricked out but it also spent 9/10 of its life up on blocks instead of actually driving somewhere interesting.

Precisely why I stopped caring and focused on forward movement.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies do you use in your startup?

#20

Post by wlievens »

astrofinch wrote: post #11

Can you name a single startup that failed because of their inability to scale? Development speed is way more important than scalability. Like Paul Graham says, the vast majority of startups fail because they make a product no one wants or because they never launch a product in the first place. Faster software development means you figure out if your product is a dud faster, and you're less likely to run out of morale…

I wonder, could the following be true: any startup that faces the problem of unscalable implementation will by then have the necessary resources to resolve the scaling problem? Because, by the time you run into scalability problems, you'll probably have enough investor|customer money to invest in re-architecturing your code?
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