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 MongoDB, which was a decision I like most days (I’m still a little terrified of data corruption or catastrophic failure, but the featureset is just so good it’s worth it).

The second is dropping Apache for Nginx, which I’m in the process of doing now.  This is really part of a more subtle architectural change, moving toward a long-polling/comet system for live in-browser updates.  Moving to a push model system wide is going to give us a much better scaling curve for live GameStreams, and is a no-brainer.

And under the covers, there are even subtler shifts going on.  We’re currently using Django for both our API layer and our Web layer, but that’s going to change too.  I’m playing with Tornado now (the FriendFeed offshoot technology) to give us a long-polling capable alternative at the API layer, and moving toward a replicated, and then sharded, MongoDB data store on the back end.

I started learning Python less than 2 years ago, when MongoDB was an infant project, and fired up Russian-made Nginx that same summer.  I can’t help but feel it’s a great time to be a technologist.