3 ms·

You DONT need atomicity all the time, sometimes you do (Financial Transactions) Bingo. No atomicity, bad money or no money. I'd have a problem. I also have thi

by Annatar 10y ago

You DONT need atomicity all the time, sometimes you do (Financial Transactions) Bingo. No atomicity, bad money or no money. I'd have a problem. I also have this extreme dislike of the "garbage in, garbage out" principle, so either what I'm delivering is correct, or I should be fired, because using computers at that point is pointless. If we don't care about correctness or completeness at all, then we just discounted two of the three reasons why computers exist at all. That leaves us with speed, and at that point, what use is it?

zimpenfish 10y ago
But if Uber went the "correct and complete" route, which would cost them either a lot more or drastically reduce the number of writes, that would actively hamper their business. At what point do you consider it a valid tradeoff to keep the business alive?
- Annatar 10y ago
  I would consider correctness to be critical to the survival of any business; therefore, it is my unshaken conviction that this is a thing were no compromises can be made. I'm deeply convicted about that.
  - OskarS 10y ago
    Then you're simply wrong. Spending 10x the money on making sure all data is atomically written and freshly read is idiotic if there's no problem with reading slightly stale data.
    - Annatar 10y ago
      You are assuming that ten times more money needs to be spent, but without any real basis, that's nothing but a meaningless assertion. It doesn't have to be expensive to be fast, reliable and correct.
wpietri 10y ago
> the three reasons why computers exist at all In a commercial context, computers exist to serve human needs. If increasing correctness or completeness serves neither a user need nor a business need, then the work to do that is just developer self-indulgence. And honestly, I don't have a problem with a little developer self-indulgence now and again. Sometimes I'll just clean up something because it's ugly and I don't like it. But it's important to recognize when we're doing that, because it's decidedly not what we're paid for.
snowwrestler 10y ago
It's easy to sit back on principle and point out all the ways that other people's work fails to live up to your ideals. It's a lot harder to go out and build something that actually delivers your ideals. If you think a distributed database should provide full correct completeness from all nodes while hitting 1 million writes per second, go build one that does it. If you succeed, not only will you make yourself happy, you will make yourself a shitload of money.
- Annatar 10y ago
  If you think a distributed database should provide full correct completeness from all nodes while hitting 1 million writes per second, go build one that does it. I do that for a living. If I didn't, I would not have commented.

by Annatar 10y ago

zimpenfish 10y ago

But if Uber went the "correct and complete" route, which would cost them either a lot more or drastically reduce the number of writes, that would actively hamper their business. At what point do you consider it a valid tradeoff to keep the business alive?

Annatar 10y ago
I would consider correctness to be critical to the survival of any business; therefore, it is my unshaken conviction that this is a thing were no compromises can be made. I'm deeply convicted about that.
- OskarS 10y ago
  Then you're simply wrong. Spending 10x the money on making sure all data is atomically written and freshly read is idiotic if there's no problem with reading slightly stale data.
  - Annatar 10y ago
    You are assuming that ten times more money needs to be spent, but without any real basis, that's nothing but a meaningless assertion. It doesn't have to be expensive to be fast, reliable and correct.

wpietri 10y ago

> the three reasons why computers exist at all In a commercial context, computers exist to serve human needs. If increasing correctness or completeness serves neither a user need nor a business need, then the work to do that is just developer self-indulgence. And honestly, I don't have a problem with a little developer self-indulgence now and again. Sometimes I'll just clean up something because it's ugly and I don't like it. But it's important to recognize when we're doing that, because it's decidedly not what we're paid for.

snowwrestler 10y ago

It's easy to sit back on principle and point out all the ways that other people's work fails to live up to your ideals. It's a lot harder to go out and build something that actually delivers your ideals. If you think a distributed database should provide full correct completeness from all nodes while hitting 1 million writes per second, go build one that does it. If you succeed, not only will you make yourself happy, you will make yourself a shitload of money.

Annatar 10y ago
If you think a distributed database should provide full correct completeness from all nodes while hitting 1 million writes per second, go build one that does it. I do that for a living. If I didn't, I would not have commented.