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Talked to many people lit you mentioned. Large percentage repeats these points: 1) We always wait for database, so performance of our code does not matter. Thi

by FpUser 7y ago

Talked to many people lit you mentioned. Large percentage repeats these points: 1) We always wait for database, so performance of our code does not matter. This comes from places where ironically the whole database can fit into RAM. 10+ gbps connectivity - well it is almost commodity for business so the latency is not much of a bottleneck. Fast IO to store data - well imagine array of Optane drives. Not very cheap but really peanuts for normal business. All this means that purposely built data server which is a heart of many type of business residing on decent computer, can be blindingly fast and most of the businesses will never ever outgrow it. I've written quite a few of such servers serving loads of businesses in NA so hopefully my experience is not irrelevant. 2) Scripting languages are so convenient to use and save so much time and this is what matters as the salary is a main expense. - Personally I use those mostly for management/deployment/etc.etc type of scripts and maybe to quickly test some small ideas. I clearly see their benefits there. Anything that resembles a product that would actually run business. Sorry but experienced developer can implement those just as fast as in any scripting language and it will save a ton on maintenance. 3) And finally do not do premature optimization mantra . - In my opinion switching from scripting language to something like C++ has nothing to do with premature optimization. Developer can be very productive with compiled languages as they also have megatons of libraries for any imaginable task.

kortilla 7y ago
> Sorry but experienced developer can implement those just as fast as in any scripting language and it will save a ton on maintenance. This is just a no true Scotsman argument. For 10 years I’ve watched python/ruby shops drastically outpace projects in C++/Java shops. What you’re failing to realize is how trivial most apps are and how fast fully functional back ends can be created with frameworks in those languages (django/rails). Your bit about maintenance is also bullshit. I’ve spent entire days peeling apart complex C++ code bases to make a small change to some core abstraction. Ability to maintain code is entirely up to how well organized and documented it is. It has nothing to do with “scripting”.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  > What you’re failing to realize is how trivial most apps are and how fast fully functional back ends can be created with frameworks in those languages A vast majority of web dev is incredibly simple. People tend to easily convince themselves that their app is very special and requires a lot of complex solutions to make it work. There’s a lot of incentives that lead people to that conclusion, but most of the time following the golden path laid out for you by an existing framework is going to produce a better product with much less effort.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    I run a saas platform and from the outset, I knew that we wouldn't need to do anything special or groundbreaking. We are just sort of line of business. But what I found is that the majority of the complexity started to show up when we are scaling and needed to be able to get results to the user very quickly. That's when you start to deal with queues and pubsub and architecting things to run in parallel. We have a process that only takes about 10 seconds to run completely. Which is acceptable lag time for us. But now, 20 people are simultaneously making that request and the person at the end of the line has to wait 200 seconds, which is not acceptable. This only happens occasionally, so adding servers would be a big waste. That's where the more complicated cloud setups start to help.
- FpUser 7y ago
  "What you’re failing to realize is how trivial most apps are and how fast fully functional back ends can be created with frameworks in those languages (django/rails)." Sorry but I have the exact opposite experience. First of all I would not call line of business applications incredibly simple. They're rather quite complex business rule wise. I saw floors filled with web developers constantly writing /rewriting endless stream of scripts often without any meaningful attempts to organize the code. In one example I was writing Python (yes guilty it is good for this type of tasks) scripts to process literally thousands of files of their source code to find and properly replace database access methods of which single app had not less then 5. Ability to maintain code is entirely up to how well organized and documented it is. It has nothing to do with “scripting” This I can 100% agree with

by FpUser 7y ago

kortilla 7y ago

> Sorry but experienced developer can implement those just as fast as in any scripting language and it will save a ton on maintenance. This is just a no true Scotsman argument. For 10 years I’ve watched python/ruby shops drastically outpace projects in C++/Java shops. What you’re failing to realize is how trivial most apps are and how fast fully functional back ends can be created with frameworks in those languages (django/rails). Your bit about maintenance is also bullshit. I’ve spent entire days peeling apart complex C++ code bases to make a small change to some core abstraction. Ability to maintain code is entirely up to how well organized and documented it is. It has nothing to do with “scripting”.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
> What you’re failing to realize is how trivial most apps are and how fast fully functional back ends can be created with frameworks in those languages A vast majority of web dev is incredibly simple. People tend to easily convince themselves that their app is very special and requires a lot of complex solutions to make it work. There’s a lot of incentives that lead people to that conclusion, but most of the time following the golden path laid out for you by an existing framework is going to produce a better product with much less effort.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  I run a saas platform and from the outset, I knew that we wouldn't need to do anything special or groundbreaking. We are just sort of line of business. But what I found is that the majority of the complexity started to show up when we are scaling and needed to be able to get results to the user very quickly. That's when you start to deal with queues and pubsub and architecting things to run in parallel. We have a process that only takes about 10 seconds to run completely. Which is acceptable lag time for us. But now, 20 people are simultaneously making that request and the person at the end of the line has to wait 200 seconds, which is not acceptable. This only happens occasionally, so adding servers would be a big waste. That's where the more complicated cloud setups start to help.
FpUser 7y ago
"What you’re failing to realize is how trivial most apps are and how fast fully functional back ends can be created with frameworks in those languages (django/rails)." Sorry but I have the exact opposite experience. First of all I would not call line of business applications incredibly simple. They're rather quite complex business rule wise. I saw floors filled with web developers constantly writing /rewriting endless stream of scripts often without any meaningful attempts to organize the code. In one example I was writing Python (yes guilty it is good for this type of tasks) scripts to process literally thousands of files of their source code to find and properly replace database access methods of which single app had not less then 5. Ability to maintain code is entirely up to how well organized and documented it is. It has nothing to do with “scripting” This I can 100% agree with