3 ms·

I always thought HN was more of a one man job. I didn't realize there is an entire team working on it (full time?). Honestly there doesn't seem to be much to wo

by Achshar 12y ago

I always thought HN was more of a one man job. I didn't realize there is an entire team working on it (full time?). Honestly there doesn't seem to be much to work on here. It's a simple site that rarely changes (at least on the front end).

tdicola 12y ago
'Simple site' that gets probably tens of thousand if not hundreds of throusand unique visitors a day.
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- Igglyboo 12y ago
  HN uses 12 lines of javascript total, it's pretty damn simple.
  - tdicola 12y ago
    And what about the backend? Last I heard it's all stored as files on a handful of machines, so it's not like it's some off the shelf database you can just keep throwing machines at to scale. Also it's written in lisp originally by one person, so have fun figuring out how it all works and ramping up to it quickly. There's also certainly a big support overhead dealing with the moderation of stories and comments. I'm not saying it should take hundreds of dedicated engineers to run the site, but I think it's silly to look at it and think you could run it in your spare time because it's just a list of stories.
petercooper 12y ago
I believe the whole idea of having multiple people working on it permanently was only introduced six months to a year ago(?) And it seems like big changes are happening underneath us, mostly in terms of story quality: https://twitter.com/sama/status/519240112907894784 https://twitter.com/sama/status/519240112907894784
BigChiefSmokem 12y ago
I hope not - what if that one man gets hit by a bus? I always assumed HN was more of an operations challenge rather then a purely algorithmic one. Lotsa traffic I assume. Not sure about the scope of user/comment moderation around here but something tells me their item ranking system just might be that good.

3 ms·

I always thought HN was more of a one man job. I didn't realize there is an entire team working on it (full time?). Honestly there doesn't seem to be much to wo

by Achshar 12y ago

tdicola 12y ago
'Simple site' that gets probably tens of thousand if not hundreds of throusand unique visitors a day.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  HN uses 12 lines of javascript total, it's pretty damn simple.
  - tdicola 12y ago
    And what about the backend? Last I heard it's all stored as files on a handful of machines, so it's not like it's some off the shelf database you can just keep throwing machines at to scale. Also it's written in lisp originally by one person, so have fun figuring out how it all works and ramping up to it quickly. There's also certainly a big support overhead dealing with the moderation of stories and comments. I'm not saying it should take hundreds of dedicated engineers to run the site, but I think it's silly to look at it and think you could run it in your spare time because it's just a list of stories.
petercooper 12y ago
I believe the whole idea of having multiple people working on it permanently was only introduced six months to a year ago(?) And it seems like big changes are happening underneath us, mostly in terms of story quality: https://twitter.com/sama/status/519240112907894784 https://twitter.com/sama/status/519240112907894784
BigChiefSmokem 12y ago
I hope not - what if that one man gets hit by a bus? I always assumed HN was more of an operations challenge rather then a purely algorithmic one. Lotsa traffic I assume. Not sure about the scope of user/comment moderation around here but something tells me their item ranking system just might be that good.