8 ms·

I've found the "developer time is more important than machine time in 99% of cases" argument to be particular effective when preaching python to the C++ masses.

rbanffy 15y ago
Not only that, but, unless you are in that 1% , the money you'd spend on developers could buy a much beefier server.
- gaius 15y ago
  Well, if we're talking about scale, there is a significant difference between needing 100 servers and needing a 10,000. As in, you suddenly have far fewer choices as to where you can physically put them! At that point, suddenly, developers start to look very, very cheap next to hosting costs. If you just need to buy 2 servers instead of 1 then sure, yeah, developer time is more expensive than hardware.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    How many applications you know that need 100 servers? I know of only a few that need 10...
    - gaius 15y ago
      The one I work on, for a start :-) A good deal more in fact... But it's not just servers. You are up against physical availability of stuff, and stuff gets exponentially more expensive as you approach the limit. A programmer who is wasteful of memory on a single box will eventually reach a point where you simply can't buy more, you will have to rewrite the app to run on more machines, for example. At the small scale, sure, programmer time is expensive. But on an industrial scale, programmers are pretty cheap compared to say "building and operating an entire new datacentre".
      - rbanffy 15y ago
        If you are in the 10+ server league, you already are in that 1% where code efficiency and performance become more important than iteration speed or ease of development. In fact, it would be interesting to map where this transition occurs ;-) And computers are cheap, regardless of how many you have. You say a datacenter with 50K servers is expensive, but imagine how bad would it be to maintain a building with 50K programmers...
prodigal_erik 15y ago
Even if 90% of startups fail, surely more than 10% of the survivors will have Twitter-esque scaling problems if all their prototypes were on platforms with severe performance drawbacks.
gaius 15y ago
That is a very dangerous myth, IMHO. Sure, sometimes it's true. But when it's not, you're up the creek without a paddle.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
Jach 15y ago
It's effective, but less-so when the audience hasn't programmed anything Big before. If you've only done programming in school, and all of your C++ assignments take anywhere from 1 to 12 hours to complete, it's hard to see the dev time benefits.

rbanffy 15y ago

Not only that, but, unless you are in that 1% , the money you'd spend on developers could buy a much beefier server.

gaius 15y ago
Well, if we're talking about scale, there is a significant difference between needing 100 servers and needing a 10,000. As in, you suddenly have far fewer choices as to where you can physically put them! At that point, suddenly, developers start to look very, very cheap next to hosting costs. If you just need to buy 2 servers instead of 1 then sure, yeah, developer time is more expensive than hardware.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  How many applications you know that need 100 servers? I know of only a few that need 10...
  - gaius 15y ago
    The one I work on, for a start :-) A good deal more in fact... But it's not just servers. You are up against physical availability of stuff, and stuff gets exponentially more expensive as you approach the limit. A programmer who is wasteful of memory on a single box will eventually reach a point where you simply can't buy more, you will have to rewrite the app to run on more machines, for example. At the small scale, sure, programmer time is expensive. But on an industrial scale, programmers are pretty cheap compared to say "building and operating an entire new datacentre".
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      If you are in the 10+ server league, you already are in that 1% where code efficiency and performance become more important than iteration speed or ease of development. In fact, it would be interesting to map where this transition occurs ;-) And computers are cheap, regardless of how many you have. You say a datacenter with 50K servers is expensive, but imagine how bad would it be to maintain a building with 50K programmers...

prodigal_erik 15y ago

Even if 90% of startups fail, surely more than 10% of the survivors will have Twitter-esque scaling problems if all their prototypes were on platforms with severe performance drawbacks.

gaius 15y ago

That is a very dangerous myth, IMHO. Sure, sometimes it's true. But when it's not, you're up the creek without a paddle.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

Jach 15y ago

It's effective, but less-so when the audience hasn't programmed anything Big before. If you've only done programming in school, and all of your C++ assignments take anywhere from 1 to 12 hours to complete, it's hard to see the dev time benefits.