The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
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The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
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Re: The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
#2Before the title was moderated there was an important tidbit. StackOverflow doesn't unit-test. Fascinating.
Re: The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
#3The most important thing, technically, is having great developers who ship.
For piths sake, I want to say "Everything else is noise" but that isn't true. Everything else can help or hurt, depending on the application and how doctrinaire the application of a given approach/methodology is, the organizational knock on effects (e.g. "Mr Tough Guy Testalot" holds up the release train or nukes your architecture to make it 'testable'), etc. but, seriously, "great developers who ship" is really what moves the needle.
Re: The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
#4Here are the slides for anyone who's interested: https://speakerdeck.com/sklivvz/the-architecture-of-stackove...
Re: The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
#5Before the title was moderated there was an important tidbit. StackOverflow doesn't unit-test. Fascinating.
tldw; He says he doesn't advocate it but they get away with it by having the community test it out for them in their meta site. Then the community writes up the bugs.
Re: The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
#6The most important thing, technically, is having great developers who ship. For piths sake, I want to say "Everything else is noise" but that isn't true. Everything else can help or hurt, depending on the application and how doctrinaire the application of a given approach/methodology is, the organizational knock on effects (e.g. "Mr Tough Guy Testalot" holds up the release train or nukes your architecture to make it…
Having a great Ops staff also helps ;) Of note is Thomas Limoncelli who wrote "The Practice of System and Network Administration" [1] and "Time Management for System Administrators" [2] works for Stack Exchange (formerly at Google). The Practice of System and Network Administration is basically the bible for most sysadmins, myself included.
ps. I only singled Thomas Limoncelli out as an example just to highlight the caliber of their Ops staff.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration...
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Management-System-Administrators-Thoma...
Re: The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
#7Before the title was moderated there was an important tidbit. StackOverflow doesn't unit-test. Fascinating.
tldw; He says he doesn't advocate it but they get away with it by having the community test it out for them in their meta site. Then the community writes up the bugs.
He actually says " I'm not advocating that you shouldn't put in tests. [ The reason we can get away with this ] is that we have a great community. "
I take this to mean that he feels that StackOverflow doesn't need tests. Not that tests are useless.
Re: The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
tldw; He says he doesn't advocate it but they get away with it by having the community test it out for them in their meta site. Then the community writes up the bugs.
He actually says " I'm not advocating that you shouldn't put in tests. [ The reason we can get away with this ] is that we have a great community. " I take this to mean that he feels that StackOverflow doesn't need tests. Not that tests are useless.
That's an accurate read.
- Stack Exchange employee
Re: The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
#9Some points that I find interesting:
[1] StackOverflow has VERY FEW tests. He says that StackOverflow doesn't use many unit tests because of their active community and heavy usage of static code.
[2] Most StackOverflow employees work remotely. This is very different than a lot of companies that are now trying to force employees back into an office.
[3] Heavy usage of Static classes and methods. His main argument is that this gives them better performance than a more standard OO approach.
[4] Caching even simple pages in order to avoid performance issues caused by garbage collection.
[5] They don't worry about making a "Square Wheel". If their developers can write something more lightweight than an already developed alternative, they do! This is very different from the normal mindset of " don't reinvent the wheel ".
[6] Always using multiple monitors. I love this. I feel like my productivity is nearly halved when I am working on one tiny screen.
Overall, I was surprised at how few of the "norms" that they follow. Either way, seems like it could be a pretty cool place to work.
Re: The architecture of Stack Overflow [video]
#10The most important thing, technically, is having great developers who ship. For piths sake, I want to say "Everything else is noise" but that isn't true. Everything else can help or hurt, depending on the application and how doctrinaire the application of a given approach/methodology is, the organizational knock on effects (e.g. "Mr Tough Guy Testalot" holds up the release train or nukes your architecture to make it…
Having a great Ops staff also helps ;) Of note is Thomas Limoncelli who wrote "The Practice of System and Network Administration" [1] and "Time Management for System Administrators" [2] works for Stack Exchange (formerly at Google). The Practice of System and Network Administration is basically the bible for most sysadmins, myself included. ps. I only singled Thomas Limoncelli out as an example just to highlight the…
Violently agree.