January 2010
4 posts
5 tags
Speed, Capacity, Scalability
They’re not the same thing, and they’re not optimized the same way. People throw around the word “scalability” all the time without having a clue what it really means.
So let’s talk about the components of performance.
Speed is about how fast your software works for any given operation, independent of data load and demand. You address speed with profiling and...
LNMP
2 years ago I had never used anything in our current technology stack. I f*cking love it.
Our first prototype at GameChanger was a more obvious LAMP incarnation, Linux+Apache+MySQL+Python, where the only variation from the original was Python over PHP (thank goodness). Where we’re going now is starting to be a clearer departure from that stack.
The first mutation was swapping MySQL for...
Hiring: Similar or Different?
I was once turned down for a CTO job because the CEO said I was too much like him, and he needed to hire someone different to balance out his team.
As I’m looking over a crop of talented developers, I’ve been contemplating whether one needs to hire Ninjas or Soldiers, but realized that I could phrase it in these terms as well. Do I want to hire someone with similar core-competencies...
6 tags
1Q84 and the Autodidact
I’m reading Murakami again. I first fell in love with his writing in a Japanese lit class at Middlebury, reading him in the English translation. Soon after, during my year at Keio University in Tokyo, I picked up a copy of his Wild Sheep Chase (羊を巡る冒険) in the original Japanese, and started reading it.
It took me 6 months to get through the 2-volume (thin soft-cover volumes) novel the...