I wonder how much of the savings comes from the refactoring and how much from the difference between the speed of python and elixir.
Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs
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Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs
#22Pinterest - ah that app that has hijacked all images in google search result. Created an account once but has not really used it.
While the google images thing is kinda shitty. Pinterest is really really good at image search and image recommendations.
Yeah, one thing it really shines at is recommending eating disorder content to teenage girls.
Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs
#23By the title alone, this means nothing. How much would it cost otherwise? What is the percentage savings? In TFA, it gets better though: "Steve: That’s pretty easy. When I started on the spam team, we had close to 1,400 servers running. When we converted several parts to Elixir, we reduced that by around 95%. One of the systems that ran on 200 Python servers now runs on four Elixir servers (it can actually run on two…
> When our notifications system was running on Java, it was on 30 c32.xl instances. When we switched over to Elixir, we could run on 15. Would be curious to know how they tried to optimise the Java stack. Because on every benchmark I've seen the JVM is faster in every which way than Elixir. Except for memory where often people will over-provision the JVM rather than look at where their code might be over-allocating o…
They rewrote, which is known to help too. Going from 30 to 15 instances is not bad but it's very likely that a Java-to-Java rewrite would have helped go down too.
The big one however is going from 200 Python servers to 4 Erlang ones: a 50x reduction is quite something and a Python-to-Python rewrite would not have allowed to achieved a 50x gain:
> All this is possible because Elixir, and the Erlang platform underneath, are fundamentally designed for always-online software with many users. When you use the right tool for the job, the benefits are clear.
Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs
#24[deleted]
Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs
#25Now they can hire 4 more engineers :P
Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs
#26By the title alone, this means nothing. How much would it cost otherwise? What is the percentage savings? In TFA, it gets better though: "Steve: That’s pretty easy. When I started on the spam team, we had close to 1,400 servers running. When we converted several parts to Elixir, we reduced that by around 95%. One of the systems that ran on 200 Python servers now runs on four Elixir servers (it can actually run on two…
> When our notifications system was running on Java, it was on 30 c32.xl instances. When we switched over to Elixir, we could run on 15. Would be curious to know how they tried to optimise the Java stack. Because on every benchmark I've seen the JVM is faster in every which way than Elixir. Except for memory where often people will over-provision the JVM rather than look at where their code might be over-allocating o…
That’s exactly the thing? Why would you bother optimizing the code, looking for overallocations, leakage, tweak parameters, when you can just take a friendlier language for the same benefits.
Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs
#27I argue every project has to go through three phases
- no idea what's wrong
- No idea what's right
- We know what was right, but the world has changed now.
Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
While the google images thing is kinda shitty. Pinterest is really really good at image search and image recommendations.
Yeah, one thing it really shines at is recommending eating disorder content to teenage girls.
To be honest the world at large doesn't have an anorexia problem but an obesity epidemy.
50 millions children under the age of 5 are already obese (and I think 93% of obese children shall stay obese their entire life).
So... Anorexia may be a hill to die on and it's not fun for parents of anorexic kids but priorities, priorities and priorities.
The real eating disorder worldwide leads to obesity, not anorexia and I wish all the hate and energy spent thin-shaming was instead redirected towards fighting the more important eating disorder.
The numbers from the WHO here are scary and only ever growing:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and...
Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs
#29They could have just used different Java/Python libraries and changed the architecture for the same result. The choice of a Programming Language alone has minimal impact on performance at that scale.
Can you give a concrete example where such a result was achieved by only switching libraries and modifying architecture?
Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs
#30> The combined effect of better architecture and Elixir saved Pinterest over $2 million per year in server costs
So it may not even be Elixir that is saving most of that money. Who knows.