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

StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers

highscalability.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 278 posts

Re: StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers

#101

Post by kbenson »

shurcooL wrote: post #81
kbenson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disputing that efficient code can be easier to understand in some instances, just that the assertion that efficient code is easier to understand. Logically, disputing that just requires a single instance of efficient code that is hard to understand. I think that's a trivial enough example to be self evident. In reality, I'm just wondering what they were trying to convey with that statement. I doubt they would…

Fair point. It's possible when they said "efficient", they did not mean "hardware efficient, runs fast, doesn't use a lot of resources" but "developer efficient, faster to write and easier to understand". But that entire phrase as is doesn't make sense, I agree with that. It's also possible to be a simple mistake. Maybe they went overboard with marketing phrases and claimed something that isn't quite true.

All, true, which is why I outlined my assumptions and left it open for others to help try to figure out. :)

Unfortunately, if it is just poor communication on their part, we'll likely get no answers that can be considered more likely than others without original author or someone related (work-wise) piping up.

Re: StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers

#102

Post by pbz »

chiph wrote: post #2

I've recently started using their micro-ORM Dapper, and I like it a lot. I get the performance of hand-coded SQL, but without the tedious mapping from SqlDataReader to my entity.

Dapper is nice, but if you want to have the compiler check your queries, and still run fast, I recommend LINQ to DB: https://github.com/linq2db/linq2db

(not to be confused with LINQ to SQL from Microsoft)

Re: StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers

#104

Post by kbenson »

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #96
shurcooL wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. It's possible when they said "efficient", they did not mean "hardware efficient, runs fast, doesn't use a lot of resources" but "developer efficient, faster to write and easier to understand". But that entire phrase as is doesn't make sense, I agree with that. It's also possible to be a simple mistake. Maybe they went overboard with marketing phrases and claimed something that isn't quite true.

We never said that. The closest I can think of is that simple code (short stack, no DI, layering, etc.) is simpler AND faster at the same time, and in my talk I give specific examples.

To me, that sounds like you are saying simple code is often efficient (or that efficient code can by simple), not that efficient code is simpler (which is how I interpret the original text).

To be very clear, I don't doubt the author (you?) had a good point to make, just that it was unclear what that was from the way it was presented, and to such a degree that it took me out of the flow of reading the post, and perhaps a less ambiguous way of expressing that concept (or omitting it, if it's expressed succinctly elsewhere) would be clearer and more effective.

Re: StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers

#105

Post by AlisdairO »

Stack Overflow is the example I'm forever using when arguing against premature scale-out. For non-trivial applications scale-out has substantial complexity costs attached to it, and the overwhelming majority of applications will never truly need it.

It's frustrating to see time wasted obsessing over trying to maintain eventual consistency (or chasing bugs when you failed to do so) on systems that could quite happily run on a single, not that beefy machine.

Re: StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers

#106

Post by rayshan »

recursive wrote: post #48
lnanek2 wrote: post #44

Really hate the separate sites thing. I use a half dozen of them and they are computer related, so it is a pain in the ass always having to register and not being allowed to comment/answer at first, etc.. They have a few improvements now like importing your profile from other sites, but they shouldn't even have so many separate sites in the first place, just a tag or a category or something.

You get +100 rep bonus for linking your accounts, so you shouldn't have a problem being allowed to comment.

How? I can't seem to find this option in account admin panels.

Re: StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers

#107

Post by ygra »

tjdetwiler wrote: post #90
MichaelGG wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the opposition to static classes odd. Unless you need the data encapsulation of an object, why force people to create an object to call functions? I find too much C# code loves creating objects for no real purpose other than that's how it works. For SO, if we guess they max out around 2000 req/sec, then if a bunch of objects are being allocated for each request, there could be added GC pressure. From my own ex…

A singleton object doesn't need to be re-allocated.

Static classes are an easy way of implementing the Singleton pattern in C# ...

Re: StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers

#108

Post by nostrademons »

shurcooL wrote: post #74
kbenson wrote: post #33

> The cost of inefficient code can be higher than you think. Efficient code stretches hardware further, reduces power usage, makes code easier for programmers to understand. I'm curious what the reasoning is for "Efficient code ... makes code easier for programmers to understand". To my mind, efficient code (in this case, I assume coding to the hardware, as they mention elsewhere), has many benefits, but making it ea…

Sometimes "efficient" and "easy to understand and be sure is correct" don't have to be mutually exclusive; see this example [1] of Java and Go. Note that the code is autogenerated, so it should be equally efficient. The Go version also happens to be very simple and no different than most humans would write by hand (without trying very hard to optimize). [1] https://gist.github.com/shurcooL/9f94bbd021b4693cf584

The code samples in your gist aren't doing the same thing. The Java version decodes the UTF-8 stored in the protobuf into Java's native UTF-16 Strings on first access, while Go strings are native UTF-8 and so only a nil check is necessary.

Or are you saying that languages should always use UTF-8 natively? I would agree with you on that, but disagree that this proves your point that "efficient" and "easy to understand and verify correctness" aren't mutually exclusive. pb.getSomeId().charAt(1000) runs in constant time in Java (albeit failing to give correct data if getSomeId() contains codepoints higher than \uFFFF), but pb.GetSomeId()[1000] will give you garbage data in Go if your field contains non-ASCII text. To get a valid codepoint in Go, you'd need to do string([]rune(pb.GetSomeId())[1000]), which runs in linear time and omits the check for valid UTF-8 bytes.

Re: StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers

#109

Post by angersock »

abritishguy wrote: post #100
michael_h wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who in their right mind would do the second one? Oh abritishguy, I can assure you that the world is awash in such magical code snippets.

> competent programmer

It's amazing the sorts of things otherwise sharp programmers will write when they're tired, hurried, and devoting cycles to more interesting/complicated parts of an implementation.

Re: StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers

#110

Post by shurcooL »

nostrademons wrote: post #108
shurcooL wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes "efficient" and "easy to understand and be sure is correct" don't have to be mutually exclusive; see this example [1] of Java and Go. Note that the code is autogenerated, so it should be equally efficient. The Go version also happens to be very simple and no different than most humans would write by hand (without trying very hard to optimize). [1] https://gist.github.com/shurcooL/9f94bbd021b4693cf584

The code samples in your gist aren't doing the same thing. The Java version decodes the UTF-8 stored in the protobuf into Java's native UTF-16 Strings on first access, while Go strings are native UTF-8 and so only a nil check is necessary. Or are you saying that languages should always use UTF-8 natively? I would agree with you on that, but disagree that this proves your point that "efficient" and "easy to understand…

That's a good point, it seems the Java code is checking if the entire string is valid UTF-8 while the Go version isn't. I wonder why the behavior of generated protobufs is different between the two.
Post reply on HN