6 ms·

I started to notice this in a big way at my last job which I started in 2013. We were a rails shop and by about 2016 I was noticing most new hires would have no

I started to notice this in a big way at my last job which I started in 2013. We were a rails shop and by about 2016 I was noticing most new hires would have no idea how to write a SQL query.

cultofmetatron 1y ago
> most new hires would have no idea how to write a SQL query. probably why people think rails is slow. our integration partners and our customers are constantly amazed by how fast and efficient our system is. The secret is I know how to write a damn query. you can push a lot of logic that would otherwise be done in the api layer into a query. if done properly with the right indexes, its going to be WAY faster than pulling the data into the api server and doing clumsy data transformations there.
- hollowturtle 1y ago
  You actually confirmed that rails is slow if the optimization is on the database server and doing data mangling in ruby is less efficient
  - richwater 1y ago
    You've correctly identified that filtering a list is slower than looking up from an index. Congratulations.
    - hollowturtle 1y ago
      Thank you, let me give you the eli5: I just wanted to say that you can't claim that something is fast if speed is thanks to something else
  - runako 1y ago
    Constructively, I would suggest some areas for study: - relative speeds of programming languages (https://github.com/niklas-heer/speed-comparison https://github.com/niklas-heer/speed-comparison) - database indexing (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1108/how-does-database-indexing-work https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1108/how-does-database-i...) - numbers everyone should know (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39658138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39658138) And note that databases are generally written in C.
    - hollowturtle 1y ago
      Constructively, I just wanted to say that you can't claim that something is fast if speed is thanks to something else. OP said people thinks rails is slow but if you have a fast query it's a solved problem. Even python would be fast in this instance with an optimized query
      - cultofmetatron 1y ago
        > Even python would be fast in this instance with an optimized query I wasn't trying to argue that ruby is slow (it objectively is). I was arguing that its slowness is irrelevant for most webapps because you should be offloading most of the load to your database with efficient queries.
  - closeparen 1y ago
    Unless the database is in your process's address space (SQLite, Datomic, etc) your first problem is going to be shipping the data from the database server to the application process.
- strtok 1y ago
  1000%. It’s all about limiting those round trips to the database…

I started to notice this in a big way at my last job which I started in 2013. We were a rails shop and by about 2016 I was noticing most new hires would have no idea how to write a SQL query.

cultofmetatron 1y ago

> most new hires would have no idea how to write a SQL query. probably why people think rails is slow. our integration partners and our customers are constantly amazed by how fast and efficient our system is. The secret is I know how to write a damn query. you can push a lot of logic that would otherwise be done in the api layer into a query. if done properly with the right indexes, its going to be WAY faster than pulling the data into the api server and doing clumsy data transformations there.

hollowturtle 1y ago
You actually confirmed that rails is slow if the optimization is on the database server and doing data mangling in ruby is less efficient
- richwater 1y ago
  You've correctly identified that filtering a list is slower than looking up from an index. Congratulations.
  - hollowturtle 1y ago
    Thank you, let me give you the eli5: I just wanted to say that you can't claim that something is fast if speed is thanks to something else
- runako 1y ago
  Constructively, I would suggest some areas for study: - relative speeds of programming languages (https://github.com/niklas-heer/speed-comparison https://github.com/niklas-heer/speed-comparison) - database indexing (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1108/how-does-database-indexing-work https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1108/how-does-database-i...) - numbers everyone should know (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39658138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39658138) And note that databases are generally written in C.
  - hollowturtle 1y ago
    Constructively, I just wanted to say that you can't claim that something is fast if speed is thanks to something else. OP said people thinks rails is slow but if you have a fast query it's a solved problem. Even python would be fast in this instance with an optimized query
    - cultofmetatron 1y ago
      > Even python would be fast in this instance with an optimized query I wasn't trying to argue that ruby is slow (it objectively is). I was arguing that its slowness is irrelevant for most webapps because you should be offloading most of the load to your database with efficient queries.
- closeparen 1y ago
  Unless the database is in your process's address space (SQLite, Datomic, etc) your first problem is going to be shipping the data from the database server to the application process.
strtok 1y ago
1000%. It’s all about limiting those round trips to the database…