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Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

imherefor.me

21–30 of 104 posts

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#21
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says on the page: Don't leave or you'll lose your spot. The queue worked fine for me as long as I stayed on the page. I assume it uses focus/visibility events and puts you at the back of the queue unless you keep it open and focused. The queue length is jumping about a lot as people are visiting and leaving, because hn.

But then why did my spot jump _down_ by 60 spots when I alt-tabbed?

Your comment didn't say it did that. What did the total queue length do when that happened?

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#24
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then why did my spot jump _down_ by 60 spots when I alt-tabbed?

Your comment didn't say it did that. What did the total queue length do when that happened?

I went from 188 to 140 when I alt-tabbed, so 48, not 60.

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#25
post #10
post #6

I know this is meant to be a joke, but there are official sites in Ireland that really does use queues like this.

Whcih ones and why? Wierd load balancing? Or dumb bureaucracy?

I don't want to speculate on the reasons.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/18xjjny/myroadsafe...

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#27
I once worked for a Cambridge startup called Sayagle where you would Yagle for SayaCash (don't ask).

I started after the website was built by a cheap offshore team. It was built with JSF and we soon found that no one thought about multithreading because they only ever tested it with a single user.

Needless to say, when more than 10 users were active on the site, they would start to experience problems, like seeing eachothers data and stuff. "We" fixed the problem by adding more servers while I tried to rewrite the whole thing using spring and jsp.

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#28
post #10
post #6

I know this is meant to be a joke, but there are official sites in Ireland that really does use queues like this.

Whcih ones and why? Wierd load balancing? Or dumb bureaucracy?

we implement one for event registration. without queuing, you end up with some hidden complexity around whether a ticket in a cart counts towards the limit or not, and when it goes back into the available pool if that cart doesn't check out in time. none of it is too difficult to implement, but it is difficult to explain to users and creates experiences that frustrate people are or are perceived as unfair. for example, an event can be "sold out" while a payment is processed, and then the event becomes briefly not sold out again if the payment is declined.

a queuing system is easier for people to understand - you get in line, you have three minutes to complete your purchase when it's your turn, and everything that was available when you started your session is available until your session ends. people are still frustrated to have to queue, but at least they can form a mental model for what's happening.

IMHO a lottery system would be a better way to solve this, but event promoters tend to hate that and want a first-come first-served experience. i don't really understand why.

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#30
post #27

I once worked for a Cambridge startup called Sayagle where you would Yagle for SayaCash (don't ask). I started after the website was built by a cheap offshore team. It was built with JSF and we soon found that no one thought about multithreading because they only ever tested it with a single user. Needless to say, when more than 10 users were active on the site, they would start to experience problems, like seeing ea…

>> they would start to experience problems, like seeing eachothers data and stuff.

Wait, what?

I'm going to need some explanation or story time about how this happened.

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