←back to thread

Why HN was slow and how Rtm fixed it

(ycombinator.com)
257 points pg | 1 comments | 19 Jan 11 18:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.326s | source
Show context
axod ◴[19 Jan 11 20:31 UTC] No.2121163[source]▶
1 thread per connection??? Not doing continual GC in a separate thread and instead taking 7 seconds and blocking everything?

What is this the 1990s?

replies(2): >>2121271 #>>2121982 #
pg ◴[19 Jan 11 21:04 UTC] No.2121271[source]▶
Feel free to fork MzScheme and replace the garbage collector with a new one that runs continuously.
replies(4): >>2121343 #>>2121445 #>>2121466 #>>2121889 #
marcamillion ◴[20 Jan 11 00:07 UTC] No.2121889[source]▶
I love this response. Would be really interested in a follow-up from axod (or by pg about axod's version).

It's easy to criticize, but let's see what happens when the pedal hits the metal.

replies(1): >>2123225 #
axod ◴[20 Jan 11 10:27 UTC] No.2123225[source]▶
My response TBH, would be that there is no point spending months tweaking the engine of a ford to try and get it to perform like a porche. Just get a porche in the first place.

I don't value "being able to write it in my favorite language" at all. From what I've read, pg does. To the extent that the product suffers.

There would be absolutely no point me trying to improve mzScheme when you can do exactly the same job in other languages/platforms, and the user doesn't care/know the difference. HN could be rewritten in a weekend, in PHP/python/whatever and we wouldn't be sitting here waiting for pages to load.

(I run Mibbit, which handles a few thousand HTTP requests a second, on VPS level hardware. In Java).

replies(2): >>2123241 #>>2130395 #
1. projectileboy ◴[22 Jan 11 13:54 UTC] No.2130395[source]▶
Of course you can write a link aggregator in a weekend, but you can't write HN in a weekend - there's a lot of complexity in the HN source around controlling voting rings, spam, etc. When you're dealing with complex issues, it's a net win to use a language that enables you to think at the highest level of abstraction possible.