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Everyone else getting a 500 level error? Is this a Mastodon issue?

by pkdpic 3y ago

cratermoon 3y ago
Probably the HN Hug of Death.
solardev 3y ago
It took like 2-3 minutes for mine to load. Here's the text: ------------------------- > Anders Borsch (@anders@mastodon.cyborch.com) I have interviewed 100s of candidates for software engineering positions. I’ve done take-home tests, in person challenges, pair programming with the candidates. All of them were awful experiences for me and especially for the candidate. I can only think of a single instance where a code challenge exposed a poor software engineer and I could definitely have made the same assessment just by talking to them. Lately I’ve stopped doing any software or mental puzzles. I don’t do any of that when I interview designers or QA people or HR people, so why would I be particularly toxic towards software engineers during the hiring process? Instead, I actually read their resumes (which is significantly quicker than doing interviews, asking them to repeat the same information), and then I ask them questions like: - Where do you get your tech news? - How do you learn about new technologies? - What do you most appreciate in your coworkers today? - What is a perfect workday like for you? I specifically avoid trap-style questions like “what is your greatest weakness?” or “why are you leaving your current job?” I recommend that you make a plan for what you want to learn about the candidate, e.g. “are they good at acquiring new skills?” or “do they share the same values as the team?” and then structure the interview around that. Be a non-toxic manager. Make your company look good during the interview process. Get better candidates.
- suzzer99 3y ago
  My first 3 or 4 tech jobs started with interviews like this, which seemed to work fine. Then everyone fell in love with coding questions. It's funny to think some hiring managers might be going back to interviewing like every other job.
riffic 3y ago
Mastodon, like many other db backed web apps (notoriously WordPress), is a very brittle application when you throw a lot of unexpected load at it and when it's run on a single server.
- solardev 3y ago
  I've never used Mastodon before, but this was a terrible first introduction. Does that mean that different Mastodon instances will just go up and down depending on how their server is doing that particular moment? There's no caching or CDN? Modern Wordpress hosts do both, and it's usually very very quick to load.
  - ReactiveJelly 3y ago
    Well, yes. I suppose one could enable caching in Nginx or some other reverse proxy but Mastodon itself is just the app, there'd be no point for it to implement caching or a CDN when the admin can hook that on in front.
    - solardev 3y ago
      Well, there's invalidations etc., to consider. Wordpress uses its plugin system to interact with the various caches: https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/optimization-caching/ https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/optimization-cac... But basically, it's an essential part of a modern Wordpress stack (lol, what an oxymoron, I know), not an afterthought. It's not something a lone-wolf admin using a generic Varnish/Nginx config should do, but part of a large a community-driven effort to improve Wordpress performance. These plugins are very well integrated into the Wordpress base system and cache many parts of it. This isn't so much to defend Wordpress (whose ancient architecture requires the use of these techniques), but to express surprise that a modern software like Mastodon doesn't have this built-in.
  - slimsag 3y ago
    Mastodon generally encourages users to host their own instance of it. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/ Many people run theirs on a small VPS, raspberry pi, etc. and there are a number of 'paid hosting' providers for Mastodon servers too. In practice, this all means yes: unlike a blog, it is a complex web application, and caching and whether a CDN is in use are up to the person hosting it. Mastodon can also be fairly expensive to run, depending on how many images/videos people upload, traffic they bring to the instance, etc.

Everyone else getting a 500 level error? Is this a Mastodon issue?

by pkdpic 3y ago

Everyone else getting a 500 level error? Is this a Mastodon issue?

cratermoon 3y ago

Probably the HN Hug of Death.

solardev 3y ago

It took like 2-3 minutes for mine to load. Here's the text: ------------------------- > Anders Borsch (@anders@mastodon.cyborch.com) I have interviewed 100s of candidates for software engineering positions. I’ve done take-home tests, in person challenges, pair programming with the candidates. All of them were awful experiences for me and especially for the candidate. I can only think of a single instance where a code challenge exposed a poor software engineer and I could definitely have made the same assessment just by talking to them. Lately I’ve stopped doing any software or mental puzzles. I don’t do any of that when I interview designers or QA people or HR people, so why would I be particularly toxic towards software engineers during the hiring process? Instead, I actually read their resumes (which is significantly quicker than doing interviews, asking them to repeat the same information), and then I ask them questions like: - Where do you get your tech news? - How do you learn about new technologies? - What do you most appreciate in your coworkers today? - What is a perfect workday like for you? I specifically avoid trap-style questions like “what is your greatest weakness?” or “why are you leaving your current job?” I recommend that you make a plan for what you want to learn about the candidate, e.g. “are they good at acquiring new skills?” or “do they share the same values as the team?” and then structure the interview around that. Be a non-toxic manager. Make your company look good during the interview process. Get better candidates.

suzzer99 3y ago
My first 3 or 4 tech jobs started with interviews like this, which seemed to work fine. Then everyone fell in love with coding questions. It's funny to think some hiring managers might be going back to interviewing like every other job.

riffic 3y ago

Mastodon, like many other db backed web apps (notoriously WordPress), is a very brittle application when you throw a lot of unexpected load at it and when it's run on a single server.

solardev 3y ago
I've never used Mastodon before, but this was a terrible first introduction. Does that mean that different Mastodon instances will just go up and down depending on how their server is doing that particular moment? There's no caching or CDN? Modern Wordpress hosts do both, and it's usually very very quick to load.
- ReactiveJelly 3y ago
  Well, yes. I suppose one could enable caching in Nginx or some other reverse proxy but Mastodon itself is just the app, there'd be no point for it to implement caching or a CDN when the admin can hook that on in front.
  - solardev 3y ago
    Well, there's invalidations etc., to consider. Wordpress uses its plugin system to interact with the various caches: https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/optimization-caching/ https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/optimization-cac... But basically, it's an essential part of a modern Wordpress stack (lol, what an oxymoron, I know), not an afterthought. It's not something a lone-wolf admin using a generic Varnish/Nginx config should do, but part of a large a community-driven effort to improve Wordpress performance. These plugins are very well integrated into the Wordpress base system and cache many parts of it. This isn't so much to defend Wordpress (whose ancient architecture requires the use of these techniques), but to express surprise that a modern software like Mastodon doesn't have this built-in.
- slimsag 3y ago
  Mastodon generally encourages users to host their own instance of it. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/ Many people run theirs on a small VPS, raspberry pi, etc. and there are a number of 'paid hosting' providers for Mastodon servers too. In practice, this all means yes: unlike a blog, it is a complex web application, and caching and whether a CDN is in use are up to the person hosting it. Mastodon can also be fairly expensive to run, depending on how many images/videos people upload, traffic they bring to the instance, etc.