5 ms·

Yeah, I'm actually in the process of switching to Python/Django from Rails, so its great to hear how well it scales.

whalesalad 14y ago
I'm curious as to why you're switching. Care to share? I'm a long-time Django guy who's just been thrown into some Rails projects so I am going to be learning it shortly.
- irahul 14y ago
  From a Django, Rails, Flask, Sinatra guy; Rails is going to be fun if you leave your pre-conceived notions at the door. Rails is not Django, and Ruby is not Python, and any attempts to make it behave like how it's not supposed to behave will cause pain. However, if you can play per Rails rules(and you should), that would be a very pleasant experience. How are you learning Rails? Since you are an experienced programmer, the official rails guide will be the fastest way to get a feel of rails - http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html The link above is the modified, famous "blog in 10 minutes". When I was starting, I found it very pleasant as it covers the 20% of the Rails which you use 80% of the time.
  - whalesalad 14y ago
    This is a great reply. Thanks for the tips. I think I might do a little messing around this evening.
irahul 14y ago
At 18m visitors, I don't think your choice of Django or Rails matters. DB tends to be the limit for even the normal applications, let alone something with that kind of volume.
- whalesalad 14y ago
  There's a kabillion factors to consider though. With that many users, yes the exact implementation matters less and the ancillary systems and how they interact are more critical. But, building the platform, being able to iterate quickly and deliver robust functionality along the way is important as well. Not that Ruby hasn't, but Django and Python have really proved their worth with some of the heavy hitters recently. Instagram, Pinterest, FriendFeed, Disqus... It's an impressive roster.
  - edwinnathaniel 14y ago
    ... and when we look at the um... "old" fart Java... their roster is even more impressive: LinkedIN, Google, NetFlix, Amazon. Just commenting ... :D
    - whalesalad 14y ago
      Touché ;) I mean really we're all just moving 1's and 0's around.
    - rayval 14y ago
      Regarding Google my understanding is that Java is only used in a few areas, and is far from the majority of their portfolio. Most their production systems are C++, while a lot of offline processing is Python. There is even a smattering of .NET (in Orkut). I think Java was used in Wave, but that is now defunct. Likely a few of these systems are being migrated to Go. Likewise with Amazon. My understanding, from chatting with some Amazon engineers at a conference, is that they have a pretty heterogeneous portfolio, even including some Perl and Oracle PL/SQL. Others who are better informed, please correct.
      - edwinnathaniel 14y ago
        GMail, Google Calendar, AdSense, AdWords, Android to name a few of the _actual_ heavy hitters from Google. Sure, not the majority, but they are all the bigger ones. http://google-opensource.blogspot.ca/2009/01/opengse-released.html http://google-opensource.blogspot.ca/2009/01/opengse-release... (I think Google Sites is also written in Java). Amazon is pretty much a big Java shop (don't forget the companies they acquired as well). Check out their jobs site.
pajju 14y ago
Check this list out, Running Python - Django [1][3][4]: -Instagram[0] -Pinterest -Disqus Disqus.com - Disqus serves over 3 billion page views, and more than 500 million unique visitors a month on it's Django stack. As far as we know we are the largest installation out there. -Mozilla[2] addons.mozilla.com and support.mozilla.com 250k+ add-ons, 150 million views per month, 500+ million api hits per day (firefox checking for updates! -Justin.tv(they moved to Django from Rails)[3] -NASA -National Geographic -Canonical -Bitbucket.org -Discovery Networks -Intel, AMD, HP, IBM -Lexis-Nexis -The Library of Congress -The New York Times -Orbitz -PBS -Rdio: Huge traffic Radio site. -VMWare -Walt Disney -The Washington Post. -lanyrd.com -OSQA Sites. OSQA is an Open Sourced similar copy of Stackoverflow, a QnA community. AFAIK some 5K sites are powered by OSQA Stack. OSQA is built on Django. -Youtube, LinkedIN, Google, NetFlix, Amazon: Python Stacks. -GMail, Google Calendar, AdSense, AdWords, Android MarketPlace to name a few of the heavy hitters from Google are on Python - Google App Engine. [0]http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/12/how-to-scale-a-1-billion-startup-a-guide-from-instagram-co-founder-mike-krieger/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/12/how-to-scale-a-1-billion-st... [1]http://jacobian.org/writing/django-community/django-community-2012/ http://jacobian.org/writing/django-community/django-communit... [2]http://reinout.vanrees.org/weblog/2011/06/06/large-mozilla-sites.html http://reinout.vanrees.org/weblog/2011/06/06/large-mozilla-s... References- [3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/886221/does-django-scale http://stackoverflow.com/questions/886221/does-django-scale [4] http://www.quora.com/Django/What-is-the-highest-traffic-website-built-on-top-of-Django http://www.quora.com/Django/What-is-the-highest-traffic-webs...
- jsolson 14y ago
  > Amazon I would double check your sources on that one.
- dirtyaura 14y ago
  You seem to exaggerate Python's use: gmail is mostly Java, like most of the otger Google apps, LinkedIn ain't using Python to my knowledge.
- irahul 14y ago
  EDIT: I upvoted the post, and now it's no longer in gray. So, it was just one downvote. Why the downvotes? Parent post is just pointing out sites which he/she knows to be using Python and/or Django, some of which are incorrect(Gmail?), or are giving the impression that they run on Python when only small sub-projects are using it(LinkedIn?, Amazon?). There are some mistakes, but on a whole, I don't see anything wrong with someone pointing out something relevant to the discussion, even if it involves bragging about something he is associated with.
tferris 14y ago
Thinking also for a while to switch—what was the trigger that you switched from Rails to Python/Django?

I'm curious as to why you're switching. Care to share? I'm a long-time Django guy who's just been thrown into some Rails projects so I am going to be learning it shortly.

irahul 14y ago
From a Django, Rails, Flask, Sinatra guy; Rails is going to be fun if you leave your pre-conceived notions at the door. Rails is not Django, and Ruby is not Python, and any attempts to make it behave like how it's not supposed to behave will cause pain. However, if you can play per Rails rules(and you should), that would be a very pleasant experience. How are you learning Rails? Since you are an experienced programmer, the official rails guide will be the fastest way to get a feel of rails - http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html The link above is the modified, famous "blog in 10 minutes". When I was starting, I found it very pleasant as it covers the 20% of the Rails which you use 80% of the time.
- whalesalad 14y ago
  This is a great reply. Thanks for the tips. I think I might do a little messing around this evening.

irahul 14y ago

At 18m visitors, I don't think your choice of Django or Rails matters. DB tends to be the limit for even the normal applications, let alone something with that kind of volume.

whalesalad 14y ago
There's a kabillion factors to consider though. With that many users, yes the exact implementation matters less and the ancillary systems and how they interact are more critical. But, building the platform, being able to iterate quickly and deliver robust functionality along the way is important as well. Not that Ruby hasn't, but Django and Python have really proved their worth with some of the heavy hitters recently. Instagram, Pinterest, FriendFeed, Disqus... It's an impressive roster.
- edwinnathaniel 14y ago
  ... and when we look at the um... "old" fart Java... their roster is even more impressive: LinkedIN, Google, NetFlix, Amazon. Just commenting ... :D
  - whalesalad 14y ago
    Touché ;) I mean really we're all just moving 1's and 0's around.
  - rayval 14y ago
    Regarding Google my understanding is that Java is only used in a few areas, and is far from the majority of their portfolio. Most their production systems are C++, while a lot of offline processing is Python. There is even a smattering of .NET (in Orkut). I think Java was used in Wave, but that is now defunct. Likely a few of these systems are being migrated to Go. Likewise with Amazon. My understanding, from chatting with some Amazon engineers at a conference, is that they have a pretty heterogeneous portfolio, even including some Perl and Oracle PL/SQL. Others who are better informed, please correct.
    - edwinnathaniel 14y ago
      GMail, Google Calendar, AdSense, AdWords, Android to name a few of the _actual_ heavy hitters from Google. Sure, not the majority, but they are all the bigger ones. http://google-opensource.blogspot.ca/2009/01/opengse-released.html http://google-opensource.blogspot.ca/2009/01/opengse-release... (I think Google Sites is also written in Java). Amazon is pretty much a big Java shop (don't forget the companies they acquired as well). Check out their jobs site.

pajju 14y ago

Check this list out, Running Python - Django [1][3][4]: -Instagram[0] -Pinterest -Disqus Disqus.com - Disqus serves over 3 billion page views, and more than 500 million unique visitors a month on it's Django stack. As far as we know we are the largest installation out there. -Mozilla[2] addons.mozilla.com and support.mozilla.com 250k+ add-ons, 150 million views per month, 500+ million api hits per day (firefox checking for updates! -Justin.tv(they moved to Django from Rails)[3] -NASA -National Geographic -Canonical -Bitbucket.org -Discovery Networks -Intel, AMD, HP, IBM -Lexis-Nexis -The Library of Congress -The New York Times -Orbitz -PBS -Rdio: Huge traffic Radio site. -VMWare -Walt Disney -The Washington Post. -lanyrd.com -OSQA Sites. OSQA is an Open Sourced similar copy of Stackoverflow, a QnA community. AFAIK some 5K sites are powered by OSQA Stack. OSQA is built on Django. -Youtube, LinkedIN, Google, NetFlix, Amazon: Python Stacks. -GMail, Google Calendar, AdSense, AdWords, Android MarketPlace to name a few of the heavy hitters from Google are on Python - Google App Engine. [0]http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/12/how-to-scale-a-1-billion-startup-a-guide-from-instagram-co-founder-mike-krieger/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/12/how-to-scale-a-1-billion-st... [1]http://jacobian.org/writing/django-community/django-community-2012/ http://jacobian.org/writing/django-community/django-communit... [2]http://reinout.vanrees.org/weblog/2011/06/06/large-mozilla-sites.html http://reinout.vanrees.org/weblog/2011/06/06/large-mozilla-s... References- [3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/886221/does-django-scale http://stackoverflow.com/questions/886221/does-django-scale [4] http://www.quora.com/Django/What-is-the-highest-traffic-website-built-on-top-of-Django http://www.quora.com/Django/What-is-the-highest-traffic-webs...

jsolson 14y ago
> Amazon I would double check your sources on that one.
dirtyaura 14y ago
You seem to exaggerate Python's use: gmail is mostly Java, like most of the otger Google apps, LinkedIn ain't using Python to my knowledge.
irahul 14y ago
EDIT: I upvoted the post, and now it's no longer in gray. So, it was just one downvote. Why the downvotes? Parent post is just pointing out sites which he/she knows to be using Python and/or Django, some of which are incorrect(Gmail?), or are giving the impression that they run on Python when only small sub-projects are using it(LinkedIn?, Amazon?). There are some mistakes, but on a whole, I don't see anything wrong with someone pointing out something relevant to the discussion, even if it involves bragging about something he is associated with.

tferris 14y ago

Thinking also for a while to switch—what was the trigger that you switched from Rails to Python/Django?