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Caching is an abstraction, not an optimization

(buttondown.com)
134 points samuel246 | 1 comments | 01 Jul 25 10:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.422s | source
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ckdot2 ◴[03 Jul 25 19:03 UTC] No.44458190[source]▶
"I think now caching is probably best understood as a tool for making software simpler" - that's cute. Caching might be beneficial for many cases, but if it doesn't do one thing then this is simplifying software. There's that famous quote "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.", and, sure, it's a bit ironical, but there's some truth in there.
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EGreg ◴[03 Jul 25 19:41 UTC] No.44458502[source]▶
I never understood about cache invalidation or naming things

Both are not that difficult, honestly.

Aren’t there a lot harder things out there

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1. Valodim ◴[03 Jul 25 20:03 UTC] No.44458692[source]▶
In my experience, the larger the software you write, the truer these become. At some point all obvious names will have collisions, and getting caching right is crucial to do but difficult to achieve because it transcends the entire stack.

You could group these two things into "getting the data model right" as the single hard thing, perhaps that rings more true to you :)