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Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

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Re: Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

#241

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

ForHackernews wrote: post #230
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any system, there will be a tension between shrinking cost/benefit, and spending more to achieve better benefit-cost. This has nothing to do with capitalism. It's a fundamental aspect of systems where there is a non-fixed relationship between investment and return (i.e. almost all systems of any kind).

The notion that "[financial] investment and [financial] return" are the only two factors worth considering in "all systems of any kind" is an artefact of capitalist thinking.

That notion is something absent from both text and subtext of my comment. You are the one who inserted it. Investment and cost come in many forms other than the financial.

Re: Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

#242

Post by throwawaythekey »

kumarvvr wrote: post #135
throwawaythekey wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but a python app can be efficient enough to serve that many users on the smallest size droplet. Any additional speed gains would only be useful for scaling and MAYBE latency.

So you agree that throughput would be different. Sure, a Python app can be efficient to serve 55k users. But scaling it to a million users, say. A python app would consume way more resources than an app in C#

I don't think any would argue that python is the fastest language. The more pertinent/practical point for most though is not to needlessly overbuild whether it be in dev time or servers.

Realistically, the author could probably serve 10x-100x more users (your million users) and still stay on the cheapest droplet with python. As you can't go smaller than the smallest, changing language can't be justified on a cost basis.

Finally, the performance differences between a well written python app and a poorly written c# app are probably not that large. The developer probably started with python, because that's what they know, and wouldn't be able to match the code quality in c# without significant effort.

Re: Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

#243

Post by srtjstjsj »

TekMol wrote: post #24
tsumnia wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound mean, but if there aren't posts/blogs/whatever explicitly telling people how to minimize costs... then they'll continue to follow the ones that make them pay $100+.

Ok, here is a quick tutorial: Step 1: Copy Peter Levels stack: https://www.nocsdegree.com/pieter-levels-learn-coding/ If he serves hundreds of thousands of monthly users and makes a million a month with a single VPS, you certainly won't have scaling issues when you start out or just have tens of thousands of users. Step 2: If you really scale beyond that, resist the urge to bloat your stack. Think long and hard about…

If I have a "million a month" business (which is coming from rich recruitijg fees on a trivial website, not amazing tech), no way am I sweating $171/mo in server bills.

Re: Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

#244

Post by srtjstjsj »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #191
golergka wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making something valuable is not the same as making money. May be you just want to feel that you're doing something good for the community. However, money is the universal way to measure value. And if you think that you create an enormous value for the community, and it's something that is important to you personally, paying a few hundred bucks a month for it should be a no-brainer.

You mean like how repairing roads should be a no brainer, but no-one wants to pay for it?

People do volunteer time and materials for guerilla road repair.

Re: Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

#245

Post by srtjstjsj »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #198
nickjj wrote: post #186

I'm confused about their thought process on their $95 a month DO servers. They mention using a blue-green deployment strategy and a managed database service. That implies their web servers are stateless, or at least stateless enough to switch between the servers seamlessly. But then they go on to say they don't want to downgrade because it means provisioning new servers. Even in the worst case scenario of not using c…

Or you can spend that few hours writing a blog post for marketing purposes or figure out how to actually generate revenue.

The blog post earned them a lot of ridicule for poor technical management, and didn't promote their business.

Re: Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

#246

Post by srtjstjsj »

lacker wrote: post #18

It's tough to generalize from things like this because "a webapp for 55k monthly users" can mean drastically different things. A user could be loading a few static pages, or that same user could be opening websocket connections or making requests that require expensive database queries. Your average user could stick around a minute, or an hour. Different apps can easily have per-monthly-user infrastructure costs that…

This app appears to be dedicated to incrementing counters in a database.

I don't even understand why they need a VPS at all. It seems simple to run off of firebase and cloudflare for the UI.

Re: Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

#247

Post by valuearb »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #237
valuearb wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amtrak is owned by the US government. US broadband is run by local monopolies established by government action. US Healthcare is heavily regulated, and grew massively expensive only after regulations were added, and preconditions were excluded. All US prisons have problems. You have any real examples?

> Amtrak is owned by the US government. Irrelevant. The actual railroads are private, and Amtrak gets shafted. Look at the state of US passenger railways, and compare them to trains in France or Spain. All countries with successful passenger rail have them public. You will find find same pattern for all examples given.

So your only example of the ills of privatization, is a company that wasn’t ever really privatized?

Re: Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

#248

Post by tsumnia »

yabai_yatsu wrote: post #236
tsumnia wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true and I recognize the purpose of being a proficient Googler; however my concerns stem out of the idea that learning many of those skills are not taught at all or expected to be learned in situ through programming assignments. Here are examples of what I mean: - An undergraduate Networking/Security course may not provide practice on appropriately salting passwords. It is merely discussed as part of some lar…

Yeah there should be debugging classes, googling classes, and how to orient yourself in a massive, existing codebase classes.

I don't think they need to be explicit courses, since that means making credits and charging students more. Rather, my research is about providing exercises specifically targeting those lower level skills. Since many of them are only a fraction of the "programming problem", they are do not require the expected hours and can be completed quickly. My hypothesis is that doing these types of problems will help reduce the time on task for coding.

Re: Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

#249

Post by strokirk »

maxk42 wrote: post #226
fxtentacle wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both you and TekMoi should probably value your own time higher. The cost savings are great, but once you spend 4 hours on configuring a database server, that'll probably be $200+ worth of your time and, thus, wipe out most of the savings.

I value four hours of my time at considerably more than $200 and the reason I'm able to do that is because I know things like how to configure a database server. But your argument is nonsensical because a one-time investment of time (much less than four hours for me, but I've been doing this for 20 years) can save you several hundred dollars a month. AWS AuroraDB, for instance, (which I also know how to configure, by…

Where and how did you aquire this knowledge?

Re: Costs of running a Python webapp for 55k monthly users

#250

Post by anang »

darekkay wrote: post #240
anang wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t cost anything to spend 4 hours of your time doing anything, so it doesn’t really wipe out any savings. Reducing a bill from $400 month to $200 is real money, not some theoretical time/value judgement. And, as others have mentioned, there is enormous value in knowing how to operate on a fairly lean tech stack. It makes it so much simpler to scale effectively while keeping costs down.

This is only true, if you do not value your free time. In your example, you've spent 4h to save 200$, so your work was worth 50$/hour. A freelancer with a 100$/hour rate might do 2 hours of work instead, spend the money, and gain 2 hours of free time. There are other factors of course, but in general, many people come up with a rate for their own free time (which is often higher than the actual rate they charge clien…

It’s not only true if you don’t your free time. It’s only true if you’re a freelancer that is turning down hours at a higher rate than what you’re saving.

Many people working on products, both on their own and within a company, aren’t turning down other profitable work to optimize existing solutions.

If I watch a two hour movie instead of spending two hours saving $100/month, it doesn’t matter how much I value my time, no one is paying me $100/hour to watch a movie.

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