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Python at Netflix

techblog.netflix.com

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Re: Python at Netflix

#21

Post by jonascopenhagen »

irahul wrote: post #8
yellow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pushing for more python use at my company as well. It's tough as everyone is drinking the ruby kool-aid. P.S. I really enjoyed your talk at QCon SF last year!

> It's tough as everyone is drinking the ruby kool-aid. Ruby and Python are similar in terms of execution speed and developer productivity. If your work requires something that Python has and Ruby doesn't(say numpy), then it might make sense; otherwise what would you accomplish by switching from Ruby to Python?

what would you accomplish by switching from Ruby to Python?

Simpler syntax?

Re: Python at Netflix

#22

Post by jedberg »

bsimpson wrote: post #11
jedberg wrote: post #2

As one of the main drivers of Python at Netflix, this one is near and dear to my heart. Let me know if you have any questions, or come visit our booth!

You know how Google claims that by saving fractions of a second for every search that billions of people do, they've saved many man-lives of productivity? As a leading engineer at both Reddit and Netflix, you've undone all of that. Well done.

I always tell people that I've spent the last six years of my life as a digital crack dealer.

Re: Python at Netflix

#23

Post by ketralnis »

robertfw wrote: post #10
voidlogic wrote: post #7

As a Java/Python shop I think Netflix should evaluate Go after 1.1 RC comes out in April. Go is very popular with people who have heavily used both Java and Python (as well as C).

Just curious, why would this be downvoted?

Because it's not helpful to anyone. It just says "they should use my favourite toy instead of their favourite toy". No details about why or how it would help anyone anywhere ever. Just "Someone else should do a lot of work. Because I said so."

Re: Python at Netflix

#24

Post by jedberg »

e1ven wrote: post #5
jedberg wrote: post #2

As one of the main drivers of Python at Netflix, this one is near and dear to my heart. Let me know if you have any questions, or come visit our booth!

Keep it up! Posts like these are great on a tech level, but they're also good recruitment - Seeing Python, along with hackers that I respect (like you) at Netflix make me at least the littlest bit tempted to go there ;)

You've caught on to our ploy!

But in all seriousness, we like to share what we do because sharing is cool and it attracts other people who like to share cool technology, which are the kind of people we like to work with.

Re: Python at Netflix

#25

Post by jedberg »

BrianEatWorld wrote: post #15
jedberg wrote: post #2

As one of the main drivers of Python at Netflix, this one is near and dear to my heart. Let me know if you have any questions, or come visit our booth!

Where can I find more info about Sting? I didn't see a link in the article and some quick Google searches haven't proved fruitful.

I don't have any info about Sting, but we're working on some blog posts that go deeper into each of these topics. I'll make sure that the interest in Sting is accounted for in the prioritization.

Re: Python at Netflix

#26

Post by jedberg »

arpineh wrote: post #3
jedberg wrote: post #2

As one of the main drivers of Python at Netflix, this one is near and dear to my heart. Let me know if you have any questions, or come visit our booth!

Hi. There was many interesting things listed at the blog post. I have been planning a system similar in idea to Sting, your OLAP server (?). I'm planning a light RPC style system on top of Pandas dataframe objects, transferring HTTP requests to Pandas method calls. Memory usage of such a system with our data is too expensive if all data is in use. So, I'm investigating possible caching and database solutions. Could y…

I just posted this above: "I don't have any info about Sting, but we're working on some blog posts that go deeper into each of these topics. I'll make sure that the interest in Sting is accounted for in the prioritization."

So now that's +2. :)

Re: Python at Netflix

#27

Post by jedberg »

netcraft wrote: post #13

Re: Web applications in python - I am curious about the overall feeling for them - Do you write web apps in python because rapid development makes up for any performance problems and if you run into problems you would rewrite it in something faster, or do you feel like a python web app can be just as good as alternatives when it comes to speed? Put another way - when you think of python for web applications / service…

I like Python for the speed of development. Also, at least for these internal apps, speed is generally of secondary concern, since these aren't typically high load applications.

At reddit we solved the problem by writing the most often called parts in C and using c extensions. There is definitely more work to do there, but overall I think Python gets a bad rap as far as speed is concerned.

It's certainly not the quickest, but it isn't a dog either.

Re: Python at Netflix

#28

Post by jedberg »

voidlogic wrote: post #7

As a Java/Python shop I think Netflix should evaluate Go after 1.1 RC comes out in April. Go is very popular with people who have heavily used both Java and Python (as well as C).

I believe we do have one or two people here looking at Go.

Given our culture, there really is nothing stopping anyone from using it, other than the fact that they would have to figure out how to interact with the platform.

Re: Python at Netflix

#29

Post by jedberg »

qxf2 wrote: post #14
bsimpson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how Google claims that by saving fractions of a second for every search that billions of people do, they've saved many man-lives of productivity? As a leading engineer at both Reddit and Netflix, you've undone all of that. Well done.

Unfair tone. I hope it was in jest. My life is not all about productivity. There is a leisure aspect as well: http://en.chessbase.com/home/TabId/211/PostId/4008728

FWIW, I knew he was kidding. He's a reddit engineer too. :)

Re: Python at Netflix

#30

Post by irahul »

netcraft wrote: post #18
irahul wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anybody equates Python with execution speed. Writing web applications in Python facilitates rapid development, and since most of the web applications are io bound, slow execution speed doesn't make noticeable difference.

So when you think of execution speed in web applications / services - what do you think of?

> when you think of execution speed in web applications

The whole web application is not CPU bound. The parts which are CPU intensive are rewritten in performant language. For eg, if you are twitter, you still render templates in Rails, and write CPU bound services in Java/Scala. Replacing the whole app with Scala/Java will be pointless.

That doesn't mean that every time you need a service, you can't use Ruby/Python. If all your API server does is check cache for data, load data if there is a cache miss, encode json and return it, Python/Ruby will do just fine.

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