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Sensei's Library has been around since I first started playing Go back in the early 2000s. Not a single thing about it has changed, technology-wise, in that ent

Sensei's Library has been around since I first started playing Go back in the early 2000s. Not a single thing about it has changed, technology-wise, in that entire time; but the community is still adding content to it daily. I guess it's kind of like HN in that regard, but with twice the longevity. It's a little corner of the internet I earnestly hope never goes away.

arnoxmp 5y ago
True, it's still a LAMP stack, migrating it to new PHP and MySQL (now MariaDB) versions every now & then, fixing a bug here and there, adding LetsEncrypt, switching from CVS to Mercurial to Git, etc. The last big feature I added was math formulas (2 years ago or so). This project really told me how important it is to leave comments for your future self - especially, if your future self hasn't touched some parts of the code for 15 years :o) Anyway, I'm approaching 50 now, so I assume that Sensei's will be here for at least another 25 years.
- z0r 5y ago
  You're the Sensei's guy? Thanks! I remember reading articles here when I was learning Go as a teenager 20 years ago.
- amiantos 5y ago
  Do you already have a plan in place for what should happen to it after those 25+ years (universe willing)? Anyone to inherit it?
  - arnoxmp 5y ago
    My experience is that it's very unlikely to find someone to carry such a site forward for decades -- everyone I met (except for 1 guy) loses interest after a few years. Don't know if archive.org would carry a read-only version forward.
- j4cob 5y ago
  Wow, thank you for all of your work on Sensei's Library! It made a huge impression on me in ~2003, and has really helped me understand Go better and get stronger. I work on Let's Encrypt. I'm glad you find the service useful!
xxpor 5y ago
Seeing how "basic" the site is made me think how little we hear about getting Slashdotted these days. Obviously not literally, but back in say, 2010, if a site like this reached the front page of /., reddit, or HN, you'd expect it to blow up immediately.
- arnoxmp 5y ago
  I can't talk about /. and reddit, but HN barely moves the needle. Today the logs say that there are ~5800 page views with a referrer from HN. CPU load: 0.07 :o) The nice thing about "basic sites" is that they don't use many resources. SL runs on a dedicated (bare metal/root) server on Hetzner (along several other services), and as long as the working set of the DB fits into memory (for Sensei's this is ~500MB) I'd argue that it withstands /., but probably not the reddit frontpage.

arnoxmp 5y ago

True, it's still a LAMP stack, migrating it to new PHP and MySQL (now MariaDB) versions every now & then, fixing a bug here and there, adding LetsEncrypt, switching from CVS to Mercurial to Git, etc. The last big feature I added was math formulas (2 years ago or so). This project really told me how important it is to leave comments for your future self - especially, if your future self hasn't touched some parts of the code for 15 years :o) Anyway, I'm approaching 50 now, so I assume that Sensei's will be here for at least another 25 years.

z0r 5y ago
You're the Sensei's guy? Thanks! I remember reading articles here when I was learning Go as a teenager 20 years ago.
amiantos 5y ago
Do you already have a plan in place for what should happen to it after those 25+ years (universe willing)? Anyone to inherit it?
- arnoxmp 5y ago
  My experience is that it's very unlikely to find someone to carry such a site forward for decades -- everyone I met (except for 1 guy) loses interest after a few years. Don't know if archive.org would carry a read-only version forward.
j4cob 5y ago
Wow, thank you for all of your work on Sensei's Library! It made a huge impression on me in ~2003, and has really helped me understand Go better and get stronger. I work on Let's Encrypt. I'm glad you find the service useful!

xxpor 5y ago

Seeing how "basic" the site is made me think how little we hear about getting Slashdotted these days. Obviously not literally, but back in say, 2010, if a site like this reached the front page of /., reddit, or HN, you'd expect it to blow up immediately.

arnoxmp 5y ago
I can't talk about /. and reddit, but HN barely moves the needle. Today the logs say that there are ~5800 page views with a referrer from HN. CPU load: 0.07 :o) The nice thing about "basic sites" is that they don't use many resources. SL runs on a dedicated (bare metal/root) server on Hetzner (along several other services), and as long as the working set of the DB fits into memory (for Sensei's this is ~500MB) I'd argue that it withstands /., but probably not the reddit frontpage.