How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go • Hacker News Board

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#331

Post by codygman » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:34 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #235

TillE wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite strange to me that people would identify as or look for a "[language] programmer". Sure, I happen to write more C++, Python, and C than anything else, but I've dabbled in just about everything and could reach comfortable proficiency in a matter of weeks. Most of programming and all of computer science is universal. Any serious programmer should be a polyglot by default.

>>Any serious programmer should be a polyglot by default. The quality of a serious programmer is to get things done. Not tool tricks. When I go out to hire a carpenter, I just ask him to show me some of his work. If I like it I buy from him or hire his services. I don't go around and ask him to demonstrate how he uses a hammer.

He doesn't use a hammer though, he prefers to use his screwdriver for everything. What you didn't see from the pictures of his work is that they have now burnt to the ground.

Burnt to the ground on purpose because there were too many bugs or it became an impossible to maintain tangled mess of meaningless symbols.

By the way, since he only uses his screwdriver and you project requires nails, he'll take 5 times longer than your deadline.

Your end product will work for about 2 months, then you'll pour the gasoline on it and burn it down yourself.

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#332

Post by codygman » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:37 AM UTC

duaneb wrote: post #140

pcwalton wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being "kitchen sink" isn't a design goal of Rust. Rather, Rust is a lower-level, safer language. Go is higher-level. Rust strives to be as minimalist as possible without sacrificing the goals of low-level control over memory and C++ performance (optional GC), memory safety, race-free concurrency, and type safety (no null pointers).

I don't think he meant kitchen sink, more that there are fundamental aspects from many parts of languages that are bound together well, which makes > Rust strives to be as minimalist as possible without sacrificing the goals of low-level control over memory and C++ performance (optional GC), memory safety, race-free concurrency, and type safety (no null pointers). somewhat funny.

Why funny? (coming from someone who's thinking about giving Rust a try)

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#333

Post by philh » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:37 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #285

jbooth wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm less lazy than most devs and have worked in lots of languages and did it just the other week -- maybe I'm just not that bright :)

Could you give a specific example as I am still thinking "random number generator" and want to balance it with your "standard idiom or library that everyone steeped in $lang knows " Cheers

I dunno how well-known the things I didn't know about are, but an example of me doing it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5113202

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#334

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:40 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #239

kyllo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why Joel Spolsky correctly observed that the replacement of C/C++ and functional languages with Java in university CS curricula is a tragedy. If you don't understand pointers or recursion, you are not a polyglot and you cannot pick up just any language in a matter of weeks. The "[language] programmer" (where [language] usually = Java or .NET) trend is a misguided attempt by industry to commoditize programmer…

The problem complicates further with the fact that IDE fever grips you very early on while using a language like Java. When I started with eclipse + Java, within hours my perception of Java was that it was really more of 'fill up the blanks' rather than programming.

And I think that is a valuable lesson too. As a developer, the end-goal is to produce something of value, working software, not spend hours frowning over pointers and references. That was my early experience with C/C++, in any case. I did end up finishing my assignments (ranging from a fractal generator via a microcontroller operating an RC boat to a simple 3D FPS game), but I did feel a lot of overhead with non-functional things.

Of course, you get the same thing in Java when you first encounter a NullPointerException, ;)

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#335

Post by porker » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:40 AM UTC

nkohari wrote: post #217

rektide wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's how I feel, I'm so very very sorry it's tripped your acceptable tolerance levels. I'll bite my lip and not add "you prat" to the end. Thanks for your considered moderation, and I see your point.

My only point is that being obtuse is not the best way to get your point across. I assume your goal in expressing your opinion is to convince others, and to do so it helps to be clear, concise, and direct.

That's a very narrow assumption as to why someone would express their opinion. The OP might be sharing their experience (in what was a humorous way) purely to be sociable in this discussion...

Not everyone is out to convince others.

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#336

Post by aidos » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:41 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #285

jbooth wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm less lazy than most devs and have worked in lots of languages and did it just the other week -- maybe I'm just not that bright :)

Could you give a specific example as I am still thinking "random number generator" and want to balance it with your "standard idiom or library that everyone steeped in $lang knows " Cheers

Things like the Counter in python collections. Actually, the python collections library in general. You don't need that stuff to do the job, but it makes the code a lot clearer.

It probably took a couple of months full time in python before I had enough understanding of the std lib to know where to find everything (I sat down and read through a description of most of the functions in there).

There are still plenty of libraries that would have made my life easier if I knew about them. I'm sure there are plenty more.

Having said all that, that's just for example. When it comes to hiring I'd still pick a good experienced developer over a specific language expert for a full time position. For me it's not so much about the understanding of a specific language as it is the appetite for understanding computers / systems in general that makes truely good developers.

Ultimately the task is going to dictate the best type of hire. Short term contract, get a specific expert. Long term hire, find someone who actually enjoys developing software :)

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#337

Post by mercurial » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:42 AM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #221

timr wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Invented Here syndrome goes away with general experience. It doesn't come back every time you switch to a new language. Just because I've never written Erlang doesn't mean that I will automatically try to write a random-number generator (say) the first time I need one in Erlang. I have enough experience to look for a library function first. Empirically, NIH tends to be more common in single-language developers, n…

I wasn't talking about NIH syndrome, I was talking about "I don't know that a common library exists for this standard use-case so I'm going to write my own one-off because I have a job to do". I mean, you can google for libraries but sometimes you just don't find them and then find out a few weeks later what you should have used.

It depends. If you're the only one knowing the language at this company... it's a bad idea, because the bus factor becomes unacceptable.

Otherwise you have a methodology problem. You don't do daily standups, where you'd have the opportunity to say "Yesterday, I started implementing X because I couldn't find a library" and more experienced coworkers would tell you "Use library Y instead".

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#338

Post by codygman » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:42 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #305

codygman wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing you don't get in the C/Python combo is total static typing. The other big win of Go is elimination of a lot of runtime errors. So it comes down to which will be more of a win for you and your product. Go has a big advantage here IMO though because of static typing AND performance increase.

Like any other language with static typing and available compiler implementations.

Is that relevant though? The parent is asking about a comparison between python+c and Go for the OP's software, so doesn't it make sense to answer to that?

Of course, you are correct. Rewriting in any other language with static typing or an available compiler implementation would also provide the benefits of static typing and detection of runtime errors.

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#339

Post by codygman » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:46 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #307

rurounijones wrote: post #211

Ok, this bit has left me confused. They were Java devs that liked ruby, they wrote applications in Ruby on Rails and the ruby apps were hitting limits so they immediately started looking at other languages. But they don't mention the most obviously (to my mind) simple option. JRuby It is ruby (They like ruby). Most ruby apps can be run on JRuby with very very little changes (No need for a big rewrite) and it runs on…

They also did not mention why they didn't try any other of the more performant implementations of Ruby.

They probably needed a rewrite anyway, after learning more about the problem space they weren't happy with the api they'd made thus far.

Go wasn't the only thing that made their new stack better, but you can bet that Go would have made it very difficult for them to achieve performance as bad as ruby gave them.

That said, they are STILL using rails for the frontend stuff and Go for their more computationally intensive stuff IIRC.

They still kept some of their rails code, for things that were easier to keep in rails without hurting performance.

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#340

Post by mercurial » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 8:46 AM UTC

qznc wrote: post #291

cpprototypes wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I think the age of the language and community is another factor. Java, Python, C++, these are all old languages with decades of history and habits. Newer things like Node.js and Go have no history, no baggage to learn or avoid. I think starting in something with such a clean slate is somewhat easier because there is less ecosystem to learn.

I once heard a quote like this "programming languages are frozen knowledge about software engineering". (Anybody got a clue who said something like this?) New languages usually improve upon older languages by making certain errors impossible by design. For example, Go allows pointers, but not pointer arithmetic. With C we learned pointer arithmetic is often harmful (though sometimes necessary), so Java removed pointe…

Funny you should take Go as an example, since it's often bashed for not having taken the last decade of language design into account.