3 ms·

When I think of "fast", I always think of a time I was building a product that required subscribing to Twitter's API to receive updates from specific users. In

When I think of "fast", I always think of a time I was building a product that required subscribing to Twitter's API to receive updates from specific users. In my testing, I'd set a breakpoint on my server code to see when I'd get the "push" from Twitter's API and would use the Twitter App on my phone to create test tweets. Every single time, I'd create a tweet and my server breakpoint would be hit immediately. Not soon, but immediately. I'd see my breakpoint triggered well before the UI in the app even refreshed after submitting the tweet.

MacsHeadroom 6y ago
What's really wild is that the architects who envision and oversee implementation of systems that make these things possible earn a tiny fraction of what executives make. They make 5x+ the next highest IC, sure. But if they worked half as much and BS'ed 100x as much they'd make 500x. Personally, that makes me wonder a lot more than a clever combination of memcache and map-reduce.
- Answerawake 6y ago
  Technology can be understood and reasoned from first principles. Can you really say the same about human relationships, especially the complex kinds that can result in such a logical mismatch? There is a lot of irrationality in the real world.
moritonal 6y ago
I think every dev should try once in their life to write "fast" code. Learn Rust or C++ or whatever and write an echo server and try every trick you can find to make it fast. Run it a billion times for fun and just bask in it.
dmitriid 6y ago
I have a bot in Java that re-transmits messages between Slack/XMPP/Telegram. Sending message in Slack is: - sent to Slack servers - bot looked up and data sent to it - bot (on a server in DO) figures out what to do with the message (working with an MQ server running locally :))) ) - sends message back to a server (slack/xmpp/etc.) - that message gets processed and pushed to the corresponding client I could never properly measure the time between the original message and the translated message. It was always way way subsecond. Everything we have now: networks, servers, code is very fast. [1] Badly written bot here: https://github.com/dmitriid/tetrad https://github.com/dmitriid/tetrad
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  > I could never properly measure the time between the original message and the translated message. It was always way way subsecond. Everything we have now: networks, servers, code is very fast. All of that said, if the time is measured in more than triple digit nanoseconds, relative to the hardware capabilities that we have today, it’s slow. Please do not take that as a reflection on you personally or your work, but rather a reflection on the layers and layers of abstraction we’ve collectively added, and keep adding. While we’ve made it easier for people (especially developers) to write code, we’ve made everything slower, and just continue to mask that with hardware improvements.
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    I totally agree with you on that conclusion.

MacsHeadroom 6y ago

What's really wild is that the architects who envision and oversee implementation of systems that make these things possible earn a tiny fraction of what executives make. They make 5x+ the next highest IC, sure. But if they worked half as much and BS'ed 100x as much they'd make 500x. Personally, that makes me wonder a lot more than a clever combination of memcache and map-reduce.

Answerawake 6y ago
Technology can be understood and reasoned from first principles. Can you really say the same about human relationships, especially the complex kinds that can result in such a logical mismatch? There is a lot of irrationality in the real world.

moritonal 6y ago

I think every dev should try once in their life to write "fast" code. Learn Rust or C++ or whatever and write an echo server and try every trick you can find to make it fast. Run it a billion times for fun and just bask in it.

dmitriid 6y ago

I have a bot in Java that re-transmits messages between Slack/XMPP/Telegram. Sending message in Slack is: - sent to Slack servers - bot looked up and data sent to it - bot (on a server in DO) figures out what to do with the message (working with an MQ server running locally :))) ) - sends message back to a server (slack/xmpp/etc.) - that message gets processed and pushed to the corresponding client I could never properly measure the time between the original message and the translated message. It was always way way subsecond. Everything we have now: networks, servers, code is very fast. [1] Badly written bot here: https://github.com/dmitriid/tetrad https://github.com/dmitriid/tetrad

oarsinsync 6y ago
> I could never properly measure the time between the original message and the translated message. It was always way way subsecond. Everything we have now: networks, servers, code is very fast. All of that said, if the time is measured in more than triple digit nanoseconds, relative to the hardware capabilities that we have today, it’s slow. Please do not take that as a reflection on you personally or your work, but rather a reflection on the layers and layers of abstraction we’ve collectively added, and keep adding. While we’ve made it easier for people (especially developers) to write code, we’ve made everything slower, and just continue to mask that with hardware improvements.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  I totally agree with you on that conclusion.