Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HN will be down Saturday morning while we switch servers

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 129 posts

Re: HN will be down Saturday morning while we switch servers

#21

Post by abstractbill »

spoiledtechie wrote: post #20
iamwil wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I recall the last time I looked at the source (when it was released with Arc), it didn't use a database either. All the data is stored as files.

Files???? That's a joke right???

Why should it be? You can get a long long way by treating the filesystem as a database. The first engineers at Amazon used the same technique a lot, as do I.

Re: HN will be down Saturday morning while we switch servers

#23

Post by [deleted] »

tomasien wrote: post #13

It's Friday night. My favorite band ( http://www.theanatomyoffrank.com/music ) is playing a house show in my town, which is the best kind of show because it's BYOB. Then, my best friend from Texas is in town for the night, and we're meeting up. I'm definitely going to go tear it up and create some memories. And yet..... all I can think of is to stay up all night creating a "replacement HN" just for Saturday morning.…

[deleted]

Re: HN will be down Saturday morning while we switch servers

#25

Post by kansface »

abstractbill wrote: post #21
spoiledtechie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Files???? That's a joke right???

Why should it be? You can get a long long way by treating the filesystem as a database. The first engineers at Amazon used the same technique a lot, as do I.

Because you always end up building your own database out of flat files and that is always worse than using an existing one.

Re: HN will be down Saturday morning while we switch servers

#26

Post by Samuel_Michon »

wmf wrote: post #24
joezhou wrote: post #15

What are we supposed to do on Saturday morning?

Let's be honest here... 6 AM? It's a good time to be asleep.

That's 11am in the UK, noon in Western Europe, 4:30pm in India, and 8pm in Japan.

Also, it'll be 3am on the West Coast, so some people will still be enjoying their Friday night.

http://everytimezone.com/#2013-2-16,-60,6be

Re: HN will be down Saturday morning while we switch servers

#27

Post by btown »

iamwil wrote: post #16
abstractbill wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just a single server, a single process on a single core (last time I asked pg at least).

And I recall the last time I looked at the source (when it was released with Arc), it didn't use a database either. All the data is stored as files.

A link to (possibly an old version of) the source for those interested: https://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/lib/news.arc

Re: HN will be down Saturday morning while we switch servers

#28

Post by saraid216 »

kansface wrote: post #25
abstractbill wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be? You can get a long long way by treating the filesystem as a database. The first engineers at Amazon used the same technique a lot, as do I.

Because you always end up building your own database out of flat files and that is always worse than using an existing one.

And yet, here you are, on a site run off a flat file database.

Re: HN will be down Saturday morning while we switch servers

#30

Post by robinh »

kansface wrote: post #25
abstractbill wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be? You can get a long long way by treating the filesystem as a database. The first engineers at Amazon used the same technique a lot, as do I.

Because you always end up building your own database out of flat files and that is always worse than using an existing one.

Well, no. There are some exceptions, but most databases add a whole lot of bloat you don't necessarily need. Simple files can be just as fast or even faster than using a big database - which is the most important metric to me.
Post reply on HN