5 ms·

The Shanghai Stock Exchange trading system. In memory, simple text based messaging over TCP protocols. The main reason for my distain is the trivially shardable

by mianos 12y ago

The Shanghai Stock Exchange trading system. In memory, simple text based messaging over TCP protocols. The main reason for my distain is the trivially shardable nature of URL shortening. Analytics is non real time so it does not count. Down vote away.

matthewmacleod 12y ago
So in other words, you did something totally different.
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  I helped admin a site in 2001 that did tens of thousands of hps to dynamic content on a mod_perl app. And Bitly's doing static content (301's) of what, a 500 byte payload? Our static site layer did hundreds of thousands of hps with minimum a half meg of payload. The guy's got a valid point. Bitly's using way overcomplicated tech and employs way more engineers than you need to host a trivial amount of traffic for a large scale site. This is a textbook case of over-engineering.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Depends on the flexibility you want and your product's strategy. Bitly could do the same thing with objects in S3, served by Cloudfront, and get their analytics async using Cloudfront's logs. 2 engineers minimum, 3 for good measure. But that doesn't leave you much room to go anywhere else with your business.
  - ianstallings 12y ago
    It wouldn't surprise me if that was a standing order from the top - make sure it can scale to everyone on the planet. I built a service not too long ago where they were expecting 50M users in the first year. Real numbers? It's hovering around 300k users. But the good news is it can handle those 50M if they ever come :-) It is highly over-engineered.
- boomlinde 12y ago
  "Simple text based messaging over TCP" doesn't sound too different from serving http.
mindslight 12y ago
Stop being so negative, brah. Hipster-irrelevant engineering context is generally underappreciated around here (unless it's that one story about "Mel"). Especially when presented with condescension, swift downvotes result.
- fizwhiz 12y ago
  Hipster-irreverent, too.

by mianos 12y ago

matthewmacleod 12y ago

So in other words, you did something totally different.

peterwwillis 12y ago
I helped admin a site in 2001 that did tens of thousands of hps to dynamic content on a mod_perl app. And Bitly's doing static content (301's) of what, a 500 byte payload? Our static site layer did hundreds of thousands of hps with minimum a half meg of payload. The guy's got a valid point. Bitly's using way overcomplicated tech and employs way more engineers than you need to host a trivial amount of traffic for a large scale site. This is a textbook case of over-engineering.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Depends on the flexibility you want and your product's strategy. Bitly could do the same thing with objects in S3, served by Cloudfront, and get their analytics async using Cloudfront's logs. 2 engineers minimum, 3 for good measure. But that doesn't leave you much room to go anywhere else with your business.
- ianstallings 12y ago
  It wouldn't surprise me if that was a standing order from the top - make sure it can scale to everyone on the planet. I built a service not too long ago where they were expecting 50M users in the first year. Real numbers? It's hovering around 300k users. But the good news is it can handle those 50M if they ever come :-) It is highly over-engineered.
boomlinde 12y ago
"Simple text based messaging over TCP" doesn't sound too different from serving http.

mindslight 12y ago

Stop being so negative, brah. Hipster-irrelevant engineering context is generally underappreciated around here (unless it's that one story about "Mel"). Especially when presented with condescension, swift downvotes result.

fizwhiz 12y ago
Hipster-irreverent, too.