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Does it scale? Who cares (2011)

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Does it scale? Who cares (2011)

#31

Post by CodeWriter23 »

technosamay20 wrote: post #15

Couldn't agree with this article more. I built the biggest social network to come out of India from 2006-2009. It was like Twitter but over text messaging. At it's peak it had 50M+ users and sent 1B+ text messages in a day. When I started, the app was on a single machine. I didn't know a lot about databases and scaling. Didn't even know what database indexes are and what are their benefits. Just built the basic produ…

At step 3, how many messages per day were you pumping with 64MB allocated to MySQL?

Re: Does it scale? Who cares (2011)

#32

Post by hliyan »

technosamay20 wrote: post #15

Couldn't agree with this article more. I built the biggest social network to come out of India from 2006-2009. It was like Twitter but over text messaging. At it's peak it had 50M+ users and sent 1B+ text messages in a day. When I started, the app was on a single machine. I didn't know a lot about databases and scaling. Didn't even know what database indexes are and what are their benefits. Just built the basic produ…

This is probably because implicitly made available decisions from the get go. For example, if you had chosen MongoDB instead of MySQL, the story would be different. Ditto if say, Meteor instead of Java.

Re: Does it scale? Who cares (2011)

#33

Post by Alex3917 »

technosamay20 wrote: post #15

Couldn't agree with this article more. I built the biggest social network to come out of India from 2006-2009. It was like Twitter but over text messaging. At it's peak it had 50M+ users and sent 1B+ text messages in a day. When I started, the app was on a single machine. I didn't know a lot about databases and scaling. Didn't even know what database indexes are and what are their benefits. Just built the basic produ…

> I know of absolutely no service which failed because it couldn't scale.

If by scaling you mean increasing the number of page views that a given version of a web app can serve, then this is mostly true.

But things like conceptual simplicity, unit economics, codebase readability, strategy, etc. are also dimensions of scaleability. E.g. the only reason that startups can even exist at all is because large companies have a lower marginal output per employee.

Re: Does it scale? Who cares (2011)

#34

Post by qaq »

milesrout wrote: post #21
qaq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything has flaws but PHP is a reasonable choice for many problems. Python pip is crap compared to composer for example. While my favorite language is Elixir I mostly do Node and Python at work can't say experience is significantly better with either of them compared to PHP 7.

>Everything has flaws False equivalence. PHP has many, many more flaws to a much deeper and more serious level than any other mainstream programming language. It's insecure, buggy, full of broken behaviour for legacy systems, slow and easy to misuse. Its standard library is inconsistent, hard to learn, easy to misuse, full of legacy behaviour and slow. >but PHP is a reasonable choice for many problems. PHP is an unre…

OK here's a list of things I miss from PHP when doing large projects in Python. 1) Much better typing support 2) interfaces 3) visibility control 4) composer

As far as none would choose it for new project don't know if you ever heard of this company called Slack they chose PHP fairly recently and seem to be doing OK.

Re: Does it scale? Who cares (2011)

#35

Post by hliyan »

hliyan wrote: post #32
technosamay20 wrote: post #15

Couldn't agree with this article more. I built the biggest social network to come out of India from 2006-2009. It was like Twitter but over text messaging. At it's peak it had 50M+ users and sent 1B+ text messages in a day. When I started, the app was on a single machine. I didn't know a lot about databases and scaling. Didn't even know what database indexes are and what are their benefits. Just built the basic produ…

This is probably because implicitly made available decisions from the get go. For example, if you had chosen MongoDB instead of MySQL, the story would be different. Ditto if say, Meteor instead of Java.

Available --> scalable (typo)

Re: Does it scale? Who cares (2011)

#37

Post by technosamay20 »

doctorcroc wrote: post #22
technosamay20 wrote: post #15

Couldn't agree with this article more. I built the biggest social network to come out of India from 2006-2009. It was like Twitter but over text messaging. At it's peak it had 50M+ users and sent 1B+ text messages in a day. When I started, the app was on a single machine. I didn't know a lot about databases and scaling. Didn't even know what database indexes are and what are their benefits. Just built the basic produ…

Awesome story and takeaways. What happened to your product and what did you learn you could not keep up with or grow into?

I built this product as a side project within another startup I was working in. We had lot of money, had been around for 3 years and did not have a product.

Because of this I had multiple levels of bosses above me in the company. They all got really interested in starting to manage me and the product once we hit 5M users. They had a different vision, attachment and passion about the product.

Around 2008, we were spending a lot of money on text messaging. Most people where using the product to send messages for cheap to their friends and family (essentially like WhatsApp vs Twitter).

I wanted to slowly phase out text messaging in favor of Data (essentially become WhatsApp!). CEO didn't believe that Mobile Data will get adoption in India for a long time. He instead wanted to focus on monetizing - by sending ads on text messages, making people pay for premium content etc. We tried 8-10 things - nothing worked (this can be a really big post in itself).

Soon I quit and moved to US. It was like a bad breakup!

My biggest learnings were:

1. If you do not have ownership like a founder, do not that take responsibility like a cofounder.

2. Personally for me: do not work where I don't have veto rights. But bills need to be paid and family has to be supported. Took me 5 years of really hard work to get there!

Re: Does it scale? Who cares (2011)

#38

Post by qaq »

virmundi wrote: post #23
qaq wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not with memory problem is that after checkpoint postgres will do full page writes for serial you will be touching way fewer pages compared to UUID so write amplification for UUID vs bigint can be 60X+

Can you go into a bit more detail? I've seen amplification referenced before. My estimation is that the database will be pretty much read heavy. I will need to split a given database across multiple instances.

https://blog.2ndquadrant.com/on-the-impact-of-full-page-writ... this is fairly detailed analysis of this issue

Re: Does it scale? Who cares (2011)

#39

Post by iamgopal »

technosamay20 wrote: post #15

Couldn't agree with this article more. I built the biggest social network to come out of India from 2006-2009. It was like Twitter but over text messaging. At it's peak it had 50M+ users and sent 1B+ text messages in a day. When I started, the app was on a single machine. I didn't know a lot about databases and scaling. Didn't even know what database indexes are and what are their benefits. Just built the basic produ…

need much longer story if you could share. I's also Indian and Mine died at about 500k due to my focus on scalability.
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