Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs • Hacker News Board

Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs

#261

Post by AlchemistCamp » Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

kramerger wrote: post #131

capableweb wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be wrong, at least based on the quote you chose to use here, as Steve doesn't even mention anything related to functional programming?

Elixir is a functional language for the Erlang VM. Most C++/Java/Rust/... programmers wpuld have hard time understanding it. But if you are in a bubble where everyone uses Haskell and talks about Monads, then OPs statement may be valid

I picked it up pretty quickly as primarily a JS dev at the time.

I’ve also worked on several projects where I’ve pair programmed with a dev new to the language. They’re usually pretty productive within a few days. Not writing their own DSLs or going deep into OTP, but productive in terms of writing application code.

Phoenix is pretty straightforward for those who have experience with Rails, Laravel or a similar full-stack web framework.

Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs

#262

Post by coldtea » Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 1:20 PM UTC

jeswin wrote: post #151

sph wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantages of Elixir are not performance-related. There is a lot of focus on raw performance on web-related services, when in reality most of their running time is spent waiting for IO. If there are two things the BEAM excels at, is IO and turning almost any problem into half a dozen processes that are scheduled and run in parallel, if not geographically-distributed, with 1/50th the effort of any other language.…

> ... with 1/50th the effort of any other language. To junior developers reading this, such statements are never true.

Yes, this is what we call in the industry as "overhype"

Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs

#263

Post by coldtea » Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 1:21 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #230

wredue wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t need one. When a person makes a claim, especially such a ridiculous one, it is perfectly valid to outright reject that claim without any argument. Why? Because no argument was provided in the first place.

Well, I am trying to be better than them. Also I dislike FUD spreading so there's that, I am trying to engage them in a more-informed manner. Though I am not sure whom you are addressing, my parent poster or theirs.

>Also I dislike FUD spreading so there's that

Hype and FUD are different sides of the same coin

Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs

#264

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 1:22 PM UTC

swarnie wrote: post #211

bradleykingz wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to use Pinterest intentionally, a whole other to have it shoved down your throat.

Where / How are you finding Pinterest links? I've just searched about two years of browser history and i haven't landed their once.

They've infested Google's image search for years.

Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs

#265

Post by say_it_as_it_is » Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 1:22 PM UTC

A lot of enraged engineers are here arguing about the claims, ignoring the real problem at hand: Pinterest still exists. WTF is going on with people still using Pinterest?

Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs

#266

Post by sph » Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 1:23 PM UTC

jeswin wrote: post #151

sph wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantages of Elixir are not performance-related. There is a lot of focus on raw performance on web-related services, when in reality most of their running time is spent waiting for IO. If there are two things the BEAM excels at, is IO and turning almost any problem into half a dozen processes that are scheduled and run in parallel, if not geographically-distributed, with 1/50th the effort of any other language.…

> ... with 1/50th the effort of any other language. To junior developers reading this, such statements are never true.

If I had said 1/4th the effort would that have invalidated my argument? I pulled that figure out of my arse from experience. YMMV.

You'll note I'm not selling anything here, and no one is paying me a commission.

A junior that got "swindled" by my claims and spends a weekend learning Elixir becomes a better programmer and earns another feather on their cap. How tragic.

Junior devs, if you want to become a senior greybeard like me, learn anything that tickles your fancy, and ignore anyone that says it isn't worth your time. Even learning COBOL will make you a better programmer. I can only promise that Elixir is more fun than COBOL.

Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs

#267

Post by javanonymous » Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 1:24 PM UTC

knewter wrote: post #167

jeswin wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... with 1/50th the effort of any other language. To junior developers reading this, such statements are never true.

Though if people consistently over decades sing a language's praises on a single point consistently like they do the beam on this point, it's usually not without merit

They wrote it from scratch with the benefit of all the knowledge they had gathered after running the old system for years. A 2X improvement would not be surprising to me, even if they had rewritten it in the same language. .

According to others in this discussion they also made architecture changes (DB, Kafka etc.). Do we know if that improved the performance?

There is no objective way we can tell if Elixir had any performance impact. It could have been due to the rewrite, the architecture change or a combination of both.

Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs

#268

Post by emmanueloga_ » Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 1:27 PM UTC

Steve: Elixir saved Pinterest over $2 million per year in server costs.

Jose: Can we have some of that money?

Steve: No.

Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs

#269

Post by pdimitar » Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 1:27 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #263

pdimitar wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I am trying to be better than them. Also I dislike FUD spreading so there's that, I am trying to engage them in a more-informed manner. Though I am not sure whom you are addressing, my parent poster or theirs.

> Also I dislike FUD spreading so there's that Hype and FUD are different sides of the same coin

I agree.

Do you feel that Elixir is being needlessly hyped?

Re: Elixir saves Pinterest $2M a year in server costs

#270

Post by xcdzvyn » Tue, Aug 29, 2023, 1:27 PM UTC

dpkirchner wrote: post #248

bearjaws wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are referring to how they link out their images and SEO content that ultimately one will find unusable & frustrating. I have experienced this many times when looking for a specific image on Google Images, I will click on the link that goes to Pinterest only to find the image is not there.

IMO this is more a Google problem than a Pinterest problem. Google does the same thing with text search (returning results that have few if any of your search terms), possibly over relying on opengraph tags and other such metadata.

I concur. It's such a pain to go back and requote random words in my query on every search because Google decided it knew what I wanted better than I do.