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Stack Overflow is a cacheless, 9-server on-prem monolith

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Re: Stack Overflow is a cacheless, 9-server on-prem monolith

#22

Post by quanticle »

borland wrote: post #12
tony-allan wrote: post #3

In the diagram [1], I can see why you might design it that way if starting from scratch but it works as is so why change it. Is there a particular reason to suggest a change to the architecture? [1] https://twitter.com/sahnlam/status/1629713954225405952/photo...

Diagram 1 has the comment "What I think it should be". It's easy to interpret that as "stackoverflow should change to be like this", but I think it was meant to be more like "If I had to guess how stackoverflow works, this is what I think it would look like". It's amazing how much performance and scalability you can get out of computers, if you don't burden them with 100x overhead caused by shoveling data between mic…

    It's easy to interpret that as "stackoverflow should change to be
    like this", but I think it was meant to be more like "If I had to
    guess how stackoverflow works, this is what I think it would look
    like".
That's not a better interpretation. It says something (something not good) about the mindset of modern software engineers that the first thing they think of when they look at a website like StackOverflow is a n-layer microservice architecture, with more moving components than a Swiss chronometer.

Re: Stack Overflow is a cacheless, 9-server on-prem monolith

#24

Post by kichik »

Is there a website that tracks outages of other websites like Stack Overflow over years? I know some that tell you if it's down right now, but not over years.

I have a subjective feeling that Stack Overflow is down a lot more than other websites. I don't see that ever mentioned in the discussion of cloud vs on-prem which makes the discussion seem lacking.

Re: Stack Overflow is a cacheless, 9-server on-prem monolith

#25

Post by KyeRussell »

atonse wrote: post #14

Even though I love their simplicity as an example of how to be pragmatic and not over-engineer, do remember that they’ve tuned their code to the point that they built an ORM that is one of the fastest in the NET world. I used it and it was awesomely lightweight. It’s as much an example of how far world class talent can go, as it is about doing more with less.

Yep. Following some of the SO folks on Twitter a while back, I remember watching them do all sorts of things with .NET that didn’t feel remotely “necessary” for a Q&A website. It’s not like you can pull people off the street and have them get away with infrastructure this simple.

Re: Stack Overflow is a cacheless, 9-server on-prem monolith

#26

Post by banana_giraffe »

tyingq wrote: post #2

Not caching the questions and answers makes sense to me, as I imagine the hit rate wouldn't be terribly good. I would guess, though, that they somehow cache things like the sidebar list of blog articles, featured items, "Hot Network Questions", etc.

They do in fact cache some things like that, they've had caching issues in the past (and again recently, I think) with the wrong cache being used in some situations:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/235277

Re: Stack Overflow is a cacheless, 9-server on-prem monolith

#27

Post by rhaway84773 »

motoxpro wrote: post #18
didntreadarticl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

various cloud services This question does not appear to be about programming, Closed. hyped-up technologies subjective, Closed problems caused by over-engineering Opinion-based, Closed.

I know you were joking but I am so glad stuff like that is not on SO. It would look like Quora which is the scourge of the internet.

This! Quora is a great example of what SO would be if it wasn’t for their moderation.

That being said, I think most would agree it might have gone too far and there may be value in trying to tweak it a bit to make it easier to contribute.

Re: Stack Overflow is a cacheless, 9-server on-prem monolith

#29

Post by didntreadarticl »

kichik wrote: post #24

Is there a website that tracks outages of other websites like Stack Overflow over years? I know some that tell you if it's down right now, but not over years. I have a subjective feeling that Stack Overflow is down a lot more than other websites. I don't see that ever mentioned in the discussion of cloud vs on-prem which makes the discussion seem lacking.

http://stats.pingdom.com/w2oc4thvox7s/73676/history
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