4 ms·

Sleeping on error is a valid pattern when combined with retries. Consider if that would be a long-starting external process that sets up the listener (or even a

Sleeping on error is a valid pattern when combined with retries. Consider if that would be a long-starting external process that sets up the listener (or even a remote server spinning up). I.e. something we have no control over and that has no ability to signal us it's ready. In such case, sleeping a little then trying to connect (and repeating) would be simple, effective and economical solution.

mindcrime 3y ago
Sleeping on error is a valid pattern when combined with retries. Agreed. Just note that it can sometimes (often?) be a good idea to add a small stochastic element to the sleep time, and/or do something similar to the exponential back-off[1] approach that Ethernet (among other things) uses. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_backoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_backoff
- tylerhou 3y ago
  You ideally want both exponential back off plus some random delay (to prevent thundering herd).
- chrsig 3y ago
  I've never personaly seen any benefit from exponential backoff... constant backoff + jitters + short timeouts has always worked well for me. If anything, people underestimating the ramp up of exponential back off(or not capping it) has left me waiting much longer than necessary
  - justcool393 3y ago
    the amount of times something (Discord is the first example that comes to mind) starts waiting 30 seconds between retries because I wasn't connected to the network has been super absurd.
hayley-patton 3y ago
That was "more sophisticated" and I was given a sample script without a loop. (I got Terraform to wait in a retry loop, which was apparently too complex.)
- xena 3y ago
  Yeah for the record I'm not talking about delay loops, I'm talking about hardcoded sleeps in test code that cause random failures when unspoken invariants change. DevOps is a unique blend of hellfire that is almost unfair to compare to everything else in the industry. I'm glad I don't work in DevOps anymore.

mindcrime 3y ago

Sleeping on error is a valid pattern when combined with retries. Agreed. Just note that it can sometimes (often?) be a good idea to add a small stochastic element to the sleep time, and/or do something similar to the exponential back-off[1] approach that Ethernet (among other things) uses. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_backoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_backoff

tylerhou 3y ago
You ideally want both exponential back off plus some random delay (to prevent thundering herd).
chrsig 3y ago
I've never personaly seen any benefit from exponential backoff... constant backoff + jitters + short timeouts has always worked well for me. If anything, people underestimating the ramp up of exponential back off(or not capping it) has left me waiting much longer than necessary
- justcool393 3y ago
  the amount of times something (Discord is the first example that comes to mind) starts waiting 30 seconds between retries because I wasn't connected to the network has been super absurd.

hayley-patton 3y ago

That was "more sophisticated" and I was given a sample script without a loop. (I got Terraform to wait in a retry loop, which was apparently too complex.)

xena 3y ago
Yeah for the record I'm not talking about delay loops, I'm talking about hardcoded sleeps in test code that cause random failures when unspoken invariants change. DevOps is a unique blend of hellfire that is almost unfair to compare to everything else in the industry. I'm glad I don't work in DevOps anymore.