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This is just a gross simplification of the situation. You commenting from the outside without much context. GitHub is 14 year old rails app that is very complex

This is just a gross simplification of the situation. You commenting from the outside without much context. GitHub is 14 year old rails app that is very complex doing large migrations of database platforms can very difficult and take a long time.

throwusawayus 5y ago
- ketzo 5y ago
  This is a super, super annoying type of comment, and against HN guidelines. It adds absolutely nothing to the conversation. Don't go digging through people's comment history to throw mud.
  - throwusawayus 5y ago
    i did not dig through his comment history. i was directly participating in that thread i quoted! and it was a recent thread. please check it again. i agree though my comment could have been nicer. apologies. as to adding nothing to the thread: disagree. he literally dumped on AWS with false claims. how do you know i don't work at AWS? why is it ok for him to say stuff like that?
    - pubg 5y ago
      Let these types live in their supreme know-it-all fantasy world, they're not worth a thought. Anyone with a little common sense will see through their shenannigans and proceed to ignore them the way you'd ignore an ant on the sidewalk as you go about your busy day. Don't take it personally, their ignorance has nothing to do with you.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      The issue isn't just a lack of "niceness" but also how this type of comment derails the conversation into an offtopic argument which should have been pursued only in the original context. If you disagree with the particular assertions here (that your are grossly oversimplifing without context), you should address it directly. Saying "it's fine because you do it too" isn't so much a lack of "niceness", but rather how this type of comment unproductively derails the conversation into an offtopic argument while adding zero constructive discussion.
      - throwusawayus 5y ago
        > offtopic argument which should have been pursued only in the original context I would have gladly had that discussion in the original context! but he did not reply to me there, nor to any of the other 6 people who replied to that horrendously incorrect comment of his i would have let it go, but yet here he calls me out saying my own comment is grossly oversimplified, but he offered little explanation of his perspective. if i am understanding his brief argument it is: 1) github is old. 2) sharding is hard. ok so here is my response: it was a lot less old when he started working there in 2013. many other companies have sharded several years after launch. yes it is hard. i have directly worked on teams sharding larger DB's than github's, sharding legacy apps. and so forth. it can be done. it is really hard to justify github to be down this many times from the same root cause. year after year
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        shkkmo 5y ago
        > I would have gladly had that discussion in the original context! but he did not reply to me there, nor to any of the other 6 people who replied to that horrendously incorrect comment of his I think your response in that thread was sufficient. If you feel it was insufficient, that thread would be the correct place to continue the discussion or further clarify any misinformation where people may actually it. People rarely admit when they are wrong and you don't have a right to (or even a reasonble expectation of) any such admission in this context. Harassing them about it in other threads is not a positive contribution to the discussion or the community.
        throwusawayus 5y ago
        he accused me of making a gross simplification. i responded, perhaps unkindly. but at no point have i "harassed" him. github's outages have made my life difficult. planetscale's pricing scheme has also burned me. i am not just attacking this guy at random. based on upvote points i can conclude many people do think i am contributing positively to this discussion. please refrain from tone-policing me. i don't see any technical comments from you in this discussion whatsoever so how exactly are your comments positively contributing?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
infamouscow 5y ago
Blaming software/database complexity as an excuse why GitHub hasn't done so is extremely pathetic. Systems almost always gets more complex over time, not less.
- otterley 5y ago
  Until you've done it yourself successfully at GitHub's scale, I think you should withhold judgment.
  - throwusawayus 5y ago
    why do you blindly assume the person you are replying to has not worked at scale? hundreds of engineers have worked deeply on sharded mysql at massive scale, many of us comment on HN!
    - otterley 5y ago
      My experience is that people who know how challenging big, complex changes can be know better than to trivialize their difficulty when discussing them.
      - throwusawayus 5y ago
        so i would agree when talking about comments like "i could code twitter in a weekend! why so many engineers there!" but this is different. github is a 14 year old company, with annual revenue in the hundreds of millions USD I literally cannot think of any other comparable size and age mysql user who has not successfully sharded long ago and avoided outages of this magnitude. and in return we get hand-wavy excuses of "complexity!!!" from their former vice president of engineering who was previously also their first DBA. criticizing these excuses is not trivializing the complexity, it's more of a "we all did this at our respective companies, who also had a lot of complexity! why can't you? we are github users, we rely on you and are very unhappy, we want to know how this happened" and just getting excuses as an answer.

throwusawayus 5y ago

ketzo 5y ago
This is a super, super annoying type of comment, and against HN guidelines. It adds absolutely nothing to the conversation. Don't go digging through people's comment history to throw mud.
- throwusawayus 5y ago
  i did not dig through his comment history. i was directly participating in that thread i quoted! and it was a recent thread. please check it again. i agree though my comment could have been nicer. apologies. as to adding nothing to the thread: disagree. he literally dumped on AWS with false claims. how do you know i don't work at AWS? why is it ok for him to say stuff like that?
  - pubg 5y ago
    Let these types live in their supreme know-it-all fantasy world, they're not worth a thought. Anyone with a little common sense will see through their shenannigans and proceed to ignore them the way you'd ignore an ant on the sidewalk as you go about your busy day. Don't take it personally, their ignorance has nothing to do with you.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    The issue isn't just a lack of "niceness" but also how this type of comment derails the conversation into an offtopic argument which should have been pursued only in the original context. If you disagree with the particular assertions here (that your are grossly oversimplifing without context), you should address it directly. Saying "it's fine because you do it too" isn't so much a lack of "niceness", but rather how this type of comment unproductively derails the conversation into an offtopic argument while adding zero constructive discussion.
    - throwusawayus 5y ago
      > offtopic argument which should have been pursued only in the original context I would have gladly had that discussion in the original context! but he did not reply to me there, nor to any of the other 6 people who replied to that horrendously incorrect comment of his i would have let it go, but yet here he calls me out saying my own comment is grossly oversimplified, but he offered little explanation of his perspective. if i am understanding his brief argument it is: 1) github is old. 2) sharding is hard. ok so here is my response: it was a lot less old when he started working there in 2013. many other companies have sharded several years after launch. yes it is hard. i have directly worked on teams sharding larger DB's than github's, sharding legacy apps. and so forth. it can be done. it is really hard to justify github to be down this many times from the same root cause. year after year
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        > I would have gladly had that discussion in the original context! but he did not reply to me there, nor to any of the other 6 people who replied to that horrendously incorrect comment of his I think your response in that thread was sufficient. If you feel it was insufficient, that thread would be the correct place to continue the discussion or further clarify any misinformation where people may actually it. People rarely admit when they are wrong and you don't have a right to (or even a reasonble expectation of) any such admission in this context. Harassing them about it in other threads is not a positive contribution to the discussion or the community.
        throwusawayus 5y ago
        he accused me of making a gross simplification. i responded, perhaps unkindly. but at no point have i "harassed" him. github's outages have made my life difficult. planetscale's pricing scheme has also burned me. i am not just attacking this guy at random. based on upvote points i can conclude many people do think i am contributing positively to this discussion. please refrain from tone-policing me. i don't see any technical comments from you in this discussion whatsoever so how exactly are your comments positively contributing?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

infamouscow 5y ago

Blaming software/database complexity as an excuse why GitHub hasn't done so is extremely pathetic. Systems almost always gets more complex over time, not less.

otterley 5y ago
Until you've done it yourself successfully at GitHub's scale, I think you should withhold judgment.
- throwusawayus 5y ago
  why do you blindly assume the person you are replying to has not worked at scale? hundreds of engineers have worked deeply on sharded mysql at massive scale, many of us comment on HN!
  - otterley 5y ago
    My experience is that people who know how challenging big, complex changes can be know better than to trivialize their difficulty when discussing them.
    - throwusawayus 5y ago
      so i would agree when talking about comments like "i could code twitter in a weekend! why so many engineers there!" but this is different. github is a 14 year old company, with annual revenue in the hundreds of millions USD I literally cannot think of any other comparable size and age mysql user who has not successfully sharded long ago and avoided outages of this magnitude. and in return we get hand-wavy excuses of "complexity!!!" from their former vice president of engineering who was previously also their first DBA. criticizing these excuses is not trivializing the complexity, it's more of a "we all did this at our respective companies, who also had a lot of complexity! why can't you? we are github users, we rely on you and are very unhappy, we want to know how this happened" and just getting excuses as an answer.