Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
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Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
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Re: Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
#2Members of the Py3 transition team (the authors of that article) gave a talk about the project at PyCon 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66XoCk79kjM
Re: Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
#3>It made sense that, if we were going to stay on Python for the next ten years, we should invest in the latest version of the language.
I don't know this stands out to me in particular, but the 10-year commitment is definitely a big decision. I suppose I've never had to make a similar decision so perhaps this is more common than I think.
Re: Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
#4So their server needs are growing faster than their user-base to the extent that they considered switching languages. PHP didn't seem to perform much better, so they stuck with python and got a ~12% CPU usage improvement by moving to python3. It doesn't seem like a 12% one-time improvement actually solves the original problem, though. Perhaps pypy would have been better?
Re: Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
#5So their server needs are growing faster than their user-base to the extent that they considered switching languages. PHP didn't seem to perform much better, so they stuck with python and got a ~12% CPU usage improvement by moving to python3. It doesn't seem like a 12% one-time improvement actually solves the original problem, though. Perhaps pypy would have been better?
Instagram also uses Cython a lot (so I've heard from a talk), so switching away from CPython might not provide as much of a speed up as one might otherwise expect, as one can get C levels of speed (and concurrency) with significant effort using Cython. Also, Cython and PyPy might not play so well together...
Re: Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
#6“Yeah, Python is great in so many ways, too bad it’s not really scalable.”
I'm not even sure what this means anymore. I guess I'm just not sure how any language, when used correctly, could be inherently unscalable. My guess is statements like this came from a time when monoliths were the application design of choice? Now, assuming Instagram has just 1,000 photo handling servers, each one is only responsible for 95,000 photos a day.
Of course, that's not to say that Instagram doesn't have CAP issues. It does, especially in the "C" area, but again, not a problem inherent in the language.
Re: Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
#7types in python 3.5?! I had no idea -- that's exciting.
Re: Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
#8“Yeah, Python is great in so many ways, too bad it’s not really scalable.” I'm not even sure what this means anymore. I guess I'm just not sure how any language, when used correctly, could be inherently unscalable. My guess is statements like this came from a time when monoliths were the application design of choice? Now, assuming Instagram has just 1,000 photo handling servers, each one is only responsible for 95,00…
As one example, PHP 5.x as-is (without caching) isn't a language that scales well at all. It becomes a horrible bottleneck under heavy load.
Re: Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
#9Right, you hear a lot of griping about moving from Python 2 to 3 but I personally didn't have as much trouble as expected. Some of my projects just worked. One small tip I don't think they mentioned. Start using the logging module instead of print and it will eliminate one class of potential issues.
Re: Instagram Makes a Smooth Move to Python 3
#10types in python 3.5?! I had no idea -- that's exciting.
This was a big contribution from Dropbox: http://blog.zulip.org/2016/10/13/static-types-in-python-oh-m...