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I had to install Mailman 3 a while ago. It would not run on a $5 VPS from DO, because to deploy it required more memory (two gigabytes I think... mēh). Mailma

by worik 4y ago

I had to install Mailman 3 a while ago. It would not run on a $5 VPS from DO, because to deploy it required more memory (two gigabytes I think... mēh). Mailman 1 ran in 40K. It was written in Perl. Clunky, not flash, and functional. Mailman 3 is written in Python using Python tooling - Django I believe. Clunky, flash, and functional. And costed my $5 a month extra. I do not hate Python, I forgive the language for people misusing it. But it is a scripting language. That is what it is good for. Calling other systems. Not building the tight loops

deleted 4y ago
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KyeRussell 4y ago
It’s easy (and common) to point to Instagram et al as examples of people using Python and even Django at scale. Beyond those big hitters though, Python is obviously a very popular language, and Django is a very popular web framework. The people making these tooling decisions aren’t just noobs. Python and Django obviously meet the functional and performance characteristics desired by a lot of people. I have Django projects, some of which I am going to assume are more complex than Mailman, using far less than two gigabytes in production. Not through any extreme optimisation efforts. It’s just…what’s happened. In my experience, the resource footprint you experienced with Mailman is not representative. Notwithstanding the fact that we’ve seen amazing performance improvements in Python as recently ad 6(?) months ago, if speed were my primary concern, I am obviously not picking Python. This doesn’t mean that it should be relegated to the frankly at this point outdated bucket of “scripting languages”. The language’s features, performance profile, and package ecosystem all surpass these use cases. The conventional wisdom, which I completely agree with, is that these days things are good enough that speed need not be a primary concern for most people most of the time. Sure, oldschool Mailman was fast, but did anyone want to or know how to actually work on it anymore? Evidently not.
senko 4y ago
> to deploy it required more memory (two gigabytes I think... mēh That sounds like frontend was written in something requiring a webpack or similar Node tooling, or you also ran a database on the same server. In my experience, small Django setup with PostgreSQL can run fine on droplets with 512mb of ram, provided the traffic is not too heavy. Add containers or anything node-related to the mix, and it'll be 2G+.
- worik 4y ago
  Front end was Django, what ever that is, from memory. No Node.js or other nonsense. Did use docker (another example of making simple things more complicated... )

by worik 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

KyeRussell 4y ago

It’s easy (and common) to point to Instagram et al as examples of people using Python and even Django at scale. Beyond those big hitters though, Python is obviously a very popular language, and Django is a very popular web framework. The people making these tooling decisions aren’t just noobs. Python and Django obviously meet the functional and performance characteristics desired by a lot of people. I have Django projects, some of which I am going to assume are more complex than Mailman, using far less than two gigabytes in production. Not through any extreme optimisation efforts. It’s just…what’s happened. In my experience, the resource footprint you experienced with Mailman is not representative. Notwithstanding the fact that we’ve seen amazing performance improvements in Python as recently ad 6(?) months ago, if speed were my primary concern, I am obviously not picking Python. This doesn’t mean that it should be relegated to the frankly at this point outdated bucket of “scripting languages”. The language’s features, performance profile, and package ecosystem all surpass these use cases. The conventional wisdom, which I completely agree with, is that these days things are good enough that speed need not be a primary concern for most people most of the time. Sure, oldschool Mailman was fast, but did anyone want to or know how to actually work on it anymore? Evidently not.

senko 4y ago

> to deploy it required more memory (two gigabytes I think... mēh That sounds like frontend was written in something requiring a webpack or similar Node tooling, or you also ran a database on the same server. In my experience, small Django setup with PostgreSQL can run fine on droplets with 512mb of ram, provided the traffic is not too heavy. Add containers or anything node-related to the mix, and it'll be 2G+.

worik 4y ago
Front end was Django, what ever that is, from memory. No Node.js or other nonsense. Did use docker (another example of making simple things more complicated... )