4 ms·

Tell HN: Threads fast

132 points by pg 17y ago

I just rewrote the code that generates the threads page to be faster. It used to be slow the first time you called it after a restart because it had to load lot of items into memory. Now items aren't loaded till the moment they're needed. This also makes it possible to show an unlimited number of threads.

jws 17y ago
I had stopped using threads because I felt bad about the load I was imposing, frequently running until a timeout failure. Now it is indistinguishable from instantaneous.
- blhack 17y ago
  >I felt bad about the load I was imposing This is how you know you've got loyal users.
  - robryan 17y ago
    As a user of adwords I always feel bad clicking on an sponsored link in Google knowing I'm not going to buy anything.
    - samratjp 17y ago
      Yet it's amazing how there is another end of the spectrum where people are hired to cost their competitors. Just the other day, I learned that apparently "Mesothelioma" is one of the more expensive AdWords that easily goes around $40!
asnyder 17y ago
As my mathematician partner always say, it's not unlimited, but rather a very very large amount. I've learned to stop saying unlimited or infinite around him, unless I can prove it theoretically, else he'll go into this shpeel about the finite number of atoms in the universe.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Unlimited means that the system imposes no limit on the number of threads to be displayed -- each page uses a constant amount of resources, so there is no limit to how far back in your history you can go. That is my reading, anyway.
  - asnyder 17y ago
    I agree, I'm sure that's how he meant it. However, I was just trying to be humorous, this being hacker news I thought it was applicable. Clearly nobody else appreciated it.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      You're thinking of Slashdot.
tptacek 17y ago
Yes. Threads fast. Thank you.
jrockway 17y ago
Very nice. Slow threads were annoying me due to the proxy at work -- if a page took too long to respond, it would just randomly show some other page from news.yc that happened to be in the cache. (Yes, really. Now I know who else reads HN at work, and what topcolors they have chosen. ;) This was a problem, because it seems that after I wrote a post, I immediately realized there was some error, and I needed to fix it. The page that loads after you "add commment" was also affected by the cache bug, so I couldn't get an edit link there. I would have to try "threads" a number of times, and eventually, if I was lucky, I would get the edit link. Then I could fix my post. Frustrating. (And not really HN's fault, FWIW.) I haven't tried this through the proxy yet, but it seems massively faster from home, which should make the work proxy happier. Thanks!
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  i'm curious - which proxy software does that?
  - jrockway 17y ago
    No idea. It's probably very expensive, though. (The goal of our IT department is to spend the most money implementing the worst possible solutions. If it doesn't cost $5,000,000 per user per year, we're not interested. Example: I have to type 3 passwords to connect to the VPN!)
    - andrewcooke 17y ago
      Ha! Maybe I should try bidding for their work - sounds like a nice client to have ;o)
MikeCapone 17y ago
Thank you, much appreciated!
axod 17y ago
Awesome :) Looking much better from here. Thanks
ax0n 17y ago
Crazy lightning fast! Much appreciated.
cperciva 17y ago
Threads aren't really fast. The fact that you have a shared VM space allows you to avoid the cost of swapping page tables (and flushing any logically-addressed cache) but you still have to store and restore the entire architectural state, which can easily take a few hundred cycles on systems with lots of registers. Co-routines are much faster, since they allow the compiler to optimize away handling of state which it knows isn't important. ... oh wait, wrong type of threads.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Incidentally, the only usable Perl threads are implemented on top of coroutines: http://search.cpan.org/~mlehmann/Coro-5.22/Coro.pm http://search.cpan.org/~mlehmann/Coro-5.22/Coro.pm Just don't read the rant about why call/cc is useless.
dood 17y ago
Excellent, any chance the 'saved' page can get a little improvement also? At the moment it often just times out for me.
- pg 17y ago
  That's next on my list.
  - pg 17y ago
    Should work reasonably well now.
    - boundlessdreamz 17y ago
      It timed out the first time, then loaded fast the next time.
    - dmoney 17y ago
      It works for me. Thanks.
oomkiller 17y ago
Oh thank you, it was so slow, but its now zippy as can be!
icey 17y ago
HUGE difference for me, thanks! Actually, everything seems faster, not just /threads
anigbrowl 17y ago
Thank you Paul!

132 points by pg 17y ago

jws 17y ago

I had stopped using threads because I felt bad about the load I was imposing, frequently running until a timeout failure. Now it is indistinguishable from instantaneous.

blhack 17y ago
>I felt bad about the load I was imposing This is how you know you've got loyal users.
- robryan 17y ago
  As a user of adwords I always feel bad clicking on an sponsored link in Google knowing I'm not going to buy anything.
  - samratjp 17y ago
    Yet it's amazing how there is another end of the spectrum where people are hired to cost their competitors. Just the other day, I learned that apparently "Mesothelioma" is one of the more expensive AdWords that easily goes around $40!

asnyder 17y ago

As my mathematician partner always say, it's not unlimited, but rather a very very large amount. I've learned to stop saying unlimited or infinite around him, unless I can prove it theoretically, else he'll go into this shpeel about the finite number of atoms in the universe.

jrockway 17y ago
Unlimited means that the system imposes no limit on the number of threads to be displayed -- each page uses a constant amount of resources, so there is no limit to how far back in your history you can go. That is my reading, anyway.
- asnyder 17y ago
  I agree, I'm sure that's how he meant it. However, I was just trying to be humorous, this being hacker news I thought it was applicable. Clearly nobody else appreciated it.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    You're thinking of Slashdot.

tptacek 17y ago

Yes. Threads fast. Thank you.

jrockway 17y ago

Very nice. Slow threads were annoying me due to the proxy at work -- if a page took too long to respond, it would just randomly show some other page from news.yc that happened to be in the cache. (Yes, really. Now I know who else reads HN at work, and what topcolors they have chosen. ;) This was a problem, because it seems that after I wrote a post, I immediately realized there was some error, and I needed to fix it. The page that loads after you "add commment" was also affected by the cache bug, so I couldn't get an edit link there. I would have to try "threads" a number of times, and eventually, if I was lucky, I would get the edit link. Then I could fix my post. Frustrating. (And not really HN's fault, FWIW.) I haven't tried this through the proxy yet, but it seems massively faster from home, which should make the work proxy happier. Thanks!

andrewcooke 17y ago
i'm curious - which proxy software does that?
- jrockway 17y ago
  No idea. It's probably very expensive, though. (The goal of our IT department is to spend the most money implementing the worst possible solutions. If it doesn't cost $5,000,000 per user per year, we're not interested. Example: I have to type 3 passwords to connect to the VPN!)
  - andrewcooke 17y ago
    Ha! Maybe I should try bidding for their work - sounds like a nice client to have ;o)

MikeCapone 17y ago

Thank you, much appreciated!

axod 17y ago

Awesome :) Looking much better from here. Thanks

ax0n 17y ago

Crazy lightning fast! Much appreciated.

cperciva 17y ago

Threads aren't really fast. The fact that you have a shared VM space allows you to avoid the cost of swapping page tables (and flushing any logically-addressed cache) but you still have to store and restore the entire architectural state, which can easily take a few hundred cycles on systems with lots of registers. Co-routines are much faster, since they allow the compiler to optimize away handling of state which it knows isn't important. ... oh wait, wrong type of threads.

jrockway 17y ago
Incidentally, the only usable Perl threads are implemented on top of coroutines: http://search.cpan.org/~mlehmann/Coro-5.22/Coro.pm http://search.cpan.org/~mlehmann/Coro-5.22/Coro.pm Just don't read the rant about why call/cc is useless.

dood 17y ago

Excellent, any chance the 'saved' page can get a little improvement also? At the moment it often just times out for me.

pg 17y ago
That's next on my list.
- pg 17y ago
  Should work reasonably well now.
  - boundlessdreamz 17y ago
    It timed out the first time, then loaded fast the next time.
  - dmoney 17y ago
    It works for me. Thanks.

oomkiller 17y ago

Oh thank you, it was so slow, but its now zippy as can be!

icey 17y ago

HUGE difference for me, thanks! Actually, everything seems faster, not just /threads

anigbrowl 17y ago

Thank you Paul!