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We replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations and it scaled

shopify.engineering

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Re: We replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations and it scaled

#211

Post by jpease »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #189
briga wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly makes it "obvious" that this is written by AI? I could totally believe that AI was used to generate parts of it, but I really don't get the sense that the whole thing was written that way. I've seen way worse examples on this site. As software engineers we are constantly told that we need to heavily use these tools for our daily work. So is it surprising that software engineers use the same tools as writ…

Well, one thing to remember: AI learned from us (See what I did, there?) . The training these LLMs got, was from endless human-slop, on sites like LinkedIn, and marketing copy, everywhere. In fact, don't be surprised, if we start learning from AI; reversing the process. But I think that it's only a matter of time, before almost everything will be at least touched by AI. I posted this, yesterday[0]. It wasn't a partic…

AI slop: Trained on 100% natural human slop.

Re: We replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations and it scaled

#212

Post by jhhh »

My main takeaway from this post is that in 2026 we haven't developed enough technology to scalably and durably handle concurrently decrementing a single number. This has caused multiple organizations to develop database hacks (the multiple rows) or complex architectural solutions (redis) which destroy the atomicity of the process.

Re: We replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations and it scaled

#213

Post by stasomatic »

energy123 wrote: post #165
briga wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly makes it "obvious" that this is written by AI? I could totally believe that AI was used to generate parts of it, but I really don't get the sense that the whole thing was written that way. I've seen way worse examples on this site. As software engineers we are constantly told that we need to heavily use these tools for our daily work. So is it surprising that software engineers use the same tools as writ…

Subheading and dot point spam, low density writing (the opposite of standard technical english), including useless detail (like enumerating stats on Shopify's scale), using contrastive parallelism, and other llm-isms. Even if it's not AI it's bad writing done by someone who has picked up AI's worst ticks. For example this subheading: > "The real bottleneck: connections, not CPU" That's two AI smells. AI likes to say…

That's two AI smells. AI likes to say vacuous punchy statements like "the final takeaway" or "here's the rub". Then contrastive parallelism "connections, not CPU". Contrastive parallelism should scarcely exist in technical writing, regardless of whether it's AI generated.

Aren't the LLMs trained on a massive corpus of human written texts? If that stands, then they are doing what they were asked, kind of? I am also not a fan of the fluff words that Claude pollutes the context with, it's a bit much, I could live 30% less but it doesn't want to read its instructions in the .md

If the author wanted, they could ask their "AI" to write the article as a caveman, no? I, simply for fun, slop coded up a skill so that I can ask Claude to reply as Samual L. Jackson, or Kramer, etc.

I also wonder if there is an "AI language barrier", likely not in this particular article, but let's say there was a published article by a researcher whose native language isn't English. What happens with the translation? I realize I am asking naive things :)

Re: We replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations and it scaled

#214

Post by sureglymop »

malfist wrote: post #195
sureglymop wrote: post #131

Mostly unrelated but shopify is incredibly annoying. They introduced this delivery tracking app called "shop" and it has become unavoidable when buying electronics from china. Recently looked at it with mitmproxy and it ships home more than gets shipped to me.

That and they helpfully share your email with a company if you add something to your cart. You don't even have to checkout or submit a form or anything. I can't tell you the number of spam emails I've gotten from companies because they auto add everything they get from shopify to their mailing list and then nag you about not checking out

Wow that's even worse! I use a catch all email and I recently even contacted a company I bought something from about potentially being compromised because I got a weird email. This here would explain what happened.

Re: We replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations and it scaled

#215

Post by Culonavirus »

ramon156 wrote: post #143

Why even have a blog when you can't be arsed to write the posts. This is so obviously LLM-written. I have a positive view of Shopify engineers, but this kind of made a dent in that confidence.

> This is so obviously LLM-written.

Ok? Who cares. This was very interesting to me. IDGAF if AI was used (or not) to put the words in the article, the bits of information in those words is why I'm reading it. It's almost 2027, people need to accept that articles, art, videogames, code, everything will be more and more "AI touched" and you can't stop it.

I mean I share all the people's worry about AI taking jobs and a handful of AI (and AI adjacent) corps sucking out massive amounts of resources, but reading under every 2nd or 3rd article how it's AI is beginning to be more annoying than the AI writing itself.

It's like now every interesting or weird or exceptional or controversional video of anything has (what seem to be) 80-100 IQ people spamming "AI" in the comments instead of making interesting observations, posting their own anecdotes, cracking jokes etc.

Re: We replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations and it scaled

#216

Post by cataphract »

briga wrote: post #159
ramon156 wrote: post #143

Why even have a blog when you can't be arsed to write the posts. This is so obviously LLM-written. I have a positive view of Shopify engineers, but this kind of made a dent in that confidence.

What exactly makes it "obvious" that this is written by AI? I could totally believe that AI was used to generate parts of it, but I really don't get the sense that the whole thing was written that way. I've seen way worse examples on this site. As software engineers we are constantly told that we need to heavily use these tools for our daily work. So is it surprising that software engineers use the same tools as writ…

In every AI-written post, we have the script: some top post complaining it's AI-written, someone cluelessly saying they don't see it, and another person pointing out the claudisms. Sometimes someone posts a link to pangram.

I think we need the moderation team to set up some policy. In which direction idk.

Re: We replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations and it scaled

#218

Post by watrr »

cataphract wrote: post #216
briga wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly makes it "obvious" that this is written by AI? I could totally believe that AI was used to generate parts of it, but I really don't get the sense that the whole thing was written that way. I've seen way worse examples on this site. As software engineers we are constantly told that we need to heavily use these tools for our daily work. So is it surprising that software engineers use the same tools as writ…

In every AI-written post, we have the script: some top post complaining it's AI-written, someone cluelessly saying they don't see it, and another person pointing out the claudisms. Sometimes someone posts a link to pangram. I think we need the moderation team to set up some policy. In which direction idk.

The EU helps. We can report Spotify for not labeling this content, since a substantial number here think this obviously AI assisted post is genuine:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/31/ai-labels...

Spotify's defense will then be that this post is obviously AI assisted garbage.

Re: We replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations and it scaled

#219

Post by randomperson321 »

briga wrote: post #159
ramon156 wrote: post #143

Why even have a blog when you can't be arsed to write the posts. This is so obviously LLM-written. I have a positive view of Shopify engineers, but this kind of made a dent in that confidence.

What exactly makes it "obvious" that this is written by AI? I could totally believe that AI was used to generate parts of it, but I really don't get the sense that the whole thing was written that way. I've seen way worse examples on this site. As software engineers we are constantly told that we need to heavily use these tools for our daily work. So is it surprising that software engineers use the same tools as writ…

> Scale here is not abstract:

This is a really strange, clunky way of writing.

Re: We replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations and it scaled

#220

Post by kennywinker »

hamdingers wrote: post #181
nozzlegear wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounded to me like they were saying people vape in the office, which would make a bad work environment on top of the far right bros.

> people vape in the office It's famously a fully remote company.

Do you think that means they don’t have offices?
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