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Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

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Re: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

#51
post #48
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Burning" seems like an understatement. Looks like a switch to dedicated hardware would amortize within... 3 months.

Given their growth rates and cash in the bank, and the fact it is still looking for a business model, it is probably better for them to focus on their key problems before working on other issues. If they were self funded, like 37signals, and are running operations where they'd tighten the screws on cost, then the focus is different again.

I disagree.

Yes, they obviously have quite a few loose screws (read: whoever invested 100MM in that).

Either way, this is not a matter of "tightening". It's a matter of hiring an admin and having him not only pay for himself after 3 months, but for 1-2 other employees, too.

Yes, when you have 100MM in the bank then a mundane couple dozen thousand dollars a month might seem to matter less. But I can't think of a company where that kind of decadence has led to anything positive in the mid term.

Re: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

#52
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and when we look at the um... "old" fart Java... their roster is even more impressive: LinkedIN, Google, NetFlix, Amazon. Just commenting ... :D

Regarding Google my understanding is that Java is only used in a few areas, and is far from the majority of their portfolio. Most their production systems are C++, while a lot of offline processing is Python. There is even a smattering of .NET (in Orkut). I think Java was used in Wave, but that is now defunct. Likely a few of these systems are being migrated to Go. Likewise with Amazon. My understanding, from chattin…

GMail, Google Calendar, AdSense, AdWords, Android to name a few of the _actual_ heavy hitters from Google. Sure, not the majority, but they are all the bigger ones.

http://google-opensource.blogspot.ca/2009/01/opengse-release...

(I think Google Sites is also written in Java).

Amazon is pretty much a big Java shop (don't forget the companies they acquired as well). Check out their jobs site.

Re: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

#53
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and when we look at the um... "old" fart Java... their roster is even more impressive: LinkedIN, Google, NetFlix, Amazon. Just commenting ... :D

Regarding Google my understanding is that Java is only used in a few areas, and is far from the majority of their portfolio. Most their production systems are C++, while a lot of offline processing is Python. There is even a smattering of .NET (in Orkut). I think Java was used in Wave, but that is now defunct. Likely a few of these systems are being migrated to Go. Likewise with Amazon. My understanding, from chattin…

Java is pervasive at Google. Check out the Guava library and Google Guice for examples of how they adapted it for high-scalability web services.

On top off edwinnathaniel's list, add Google Sites, Google Docs, and Mapreduce frameworks such as Flume Java.

Re: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

#54
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be even cooler when we see companies reach 1 billion USD net-income with 12 employees.

I heard Microsoft Visio team probably have less than 50 people working on it (granted the name Microsoft and the Office brand provide a huge selling point). Visio almost hit $1B according to insider... (can't verify).

No that's interesting! Gots to dig into this little tidbit.

Re: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

#55
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be even cooler when we see companies reach 1 billion USD net-income with 12 employees.

I heard Microsoft Visio team probably have less than 50 people working on it (granted the name Microsoft and the Office brand provide a huge selling point). Visio almost hit $1B according to insider... (can't verify).

[deleted]

Re: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I wish it was that simple. You can't mix and match (you can theoretically ) Let's say you began with Django, right? Or there was something already ready in Django. And then you begin to see the warts. But ok, you keep churning along. And the more you churn the more of a specialist in the deficiencies of each technology you become. Like the fact that Django's ORM runs like a dog. Or see all the "we moved to MongoD…

Yes, but the Django ORM helped them launch faster. There is nothing wrong using it to start with and then writing your own SQL queries when you need to scale or even changing your data model to accommodate scaling.

Excuse me but couldn't they just optimize the way they use Django ORM?

... as in: check the output of SQL queries constructed by Django ORM and tweaked it in your Django Model layer such that the resulted SQL query will be tuned for performance?

Or at the very least, shouldn't Django ORM at least provide a way to retrieve data with "filtering" as optional parameters? (get only a few columns, but not all..)

Re: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

#57

It's nice to see that two companies valued at >= $1 billion are running a Python/Django stack. #teampony

Yeah, I'm actually in the process of switching to Python/Django from Rails, so its great to hear how well it scales.

Check this list out, Running Python - Django [1][3][4]:

-Instagram[0]

-Pinterest

-Disqus

Disqus.com - Disqus serves over 3 billion page views, and more than 500 million unique visitors a month on it's Django stack. As far as we know we are the largest installation out there.

-Mozilla[2]

addons.mozilla.com and support.mozilla.com

250k+ add-ons, 150 million views per month, 500+ million api hits per day (firefox checking for updates!

-Justin.tv(they moved to Django from Rails)[3]

-NASA

-National Geographic

-Canonical

-Bitbucket.org

-Discovery Networks

-Intel, AMD, HP, IBM

-Lexis-Nexis

-The Library of Congress

-The New York Times

-Orbitz

-PBS

-Rdio: Huge traffic Radio site.

-VMWare

-Walt Disney

-The Washington Post.

-lanyrd.com

-OSQA Sites. OSQA is an Open Sourced similar copy of Stackoverflow, a QnA community. AFAIK some 5K sites are powered by OSQA Stack. OSQA is built on Django.

-Youtube, LinkedIN, Google, NetFlix, Amazon: Python Stacks.

-GMail, Google Calendar, AdSense, AdWords, Android MarketPlace to name a few of the heavy hitters from Google are on Python - Google App Engine.

[0]http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/12/how-to-scale-a-1-billion-st...

[1]http://jacobian.org/writing/django-community/django-communit...

[2]http://reinout.vanrees.org/weblog/2011/06/06/large-mozilla-s...

References-

[3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/886221/does-django-scale

[4] http://www.quora.com/Django/What-is-the-highest-traffic-webs...

Re: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

#58
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm actually in the process of switching to Python/Django from Rails, so its great to hear how well it scales.

Check this list out, Running Python - Django [1][3][4]: -Instagram[0] -Pinterest -Disqus Disqus.com - Disqus serves over 3 billion page views, and more than 500 million unique visitors a month on it's Django stack. As far as we know we are the largest installation out there. -Mozilla[2] addons.mozilla.com and support.mozilla.com 250k+ add-ons, 150 million views per month, 500+ million api hits per day (firefox checki…

> Amazon

I would double check your sources on that one.

Re: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

#59

It's nice to see that two companies valued at >= $1 billion are running a Python/Django stack. #teampony

Yeah, I'm actually in the process of switching to Python/Django from Rails, so its great to hear how well it scales.

Thinking also for a while to switch—what was the trigger that you switched from Rails to Python/Django?

Re: Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

#60
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm actually in the process of switching to Python/Django from Rails, so its great to hear how well it scales.

At 18m visitors, I don't think your choice of Django or Rails matters. DB tends to be the limit for even the normal applications, let alone something with that kind of volume.

> DB tends to be the limit

Yes, but Rails is another huge factor too (the ORM, Ruby itself, etc.)—you would get Rails scaled somehow to 18m visitor but it's damn hard.

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