Possible opportunity for Rails development

[James Britt]

I don't think this has come up here before, but Dave Winer is looking
for assistance in rewriting Weblogs.com.

http://archive.scripting.com/2004/12/02#weblogscomNeedsARewrite

He seems to think this is a job for C. Maybe. Maybe not; others have
suggested that a properly designed app in Java or PHP would do fine.

Of course, others may think Ruby might do.

Just a thought, if anyone feels ambitious.


James

 

[Francis Hwang]

Are there people saying this could be done in any other language
besides C/C++? Looks to me like the load is pretty intense. Just
looking at the weblogs.com front page right now shows me that it got
pinged by about 70 feeds in the past minute ... and this is late on a
Friday night, probably not peak hours for blogging activity. I dunno
that much about weblogs.com, but I've got to imagine that the load is
coming from all the constant updating and recombining of cached RSS
feeds, not some namby-pamby HTML generation.

I think to be useful in this space you usually have to think in terms
of serious speed, which often precludes the possibility of using a
nicer language like Ruby or Python. Another example: PubSub.com is a
matching service that's tuned to process 3 billion matches per second.
(This is a number from the lab, not "out in the wild"; in practice
their server is only being used for a fraction of that.) Apparently
there's one server that handles all the RSS pings it gets (it's one of
the standard servers you ping, at least through ping-o-matic), and its
CPU usually runs at about 3% or 4%. Of course, their service is also
written in C.

I don't think this has come up here before, but Dave Winer is looking
for assistance in rewriting Weblogs.com.

http://archive.scripting.com/2004/12/02#weblogscomNeedsARewrite

He seems to think this is a job for C. Maybe. Maybe not; others have
suggested that a properly designed app in Java or PHP would do fine.

Of course, others may think Ruby might do.

Just a thought, if anyone feels ambitious.


James

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

 

[James Britt]

Are there people saying this could be done in any other language besides
C/C++?

Yes.

http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/02/WeblogsDotCom


James

 

[Wayne Vucenic]

Are there people saying this could be done in any other language
besides C/C++?

Further up on that same page Dave Winer says: "People ask if C# or
Java would be okay, and the answer is, of course. I basically meant
"compiled code" as opposed to interpreted code. Static instead of
dynamic. We have to cut to the metal."
http://archive.scripting.com/2004/12/02

Wayne

 

[James Britt]

Further up on that same page Dave Winer says: "People ask if C# or
Java would be okay, and the answer is, of course. I basically meant
"compiled code" as opposed to interpreted code. Static instead of
dynamic. We have to cut to the metal."
http://archive.scripting.com/2004/12/02

But is this true?

Is this a case where one would have to honestly say, No, Ruby wouldn't
be a good choice?


James

 

[gabriele renzi]

James Britt ha scritto:

But is this true?

Is this a case where one would have to honestly say, No, Ruby wouldn't
be a good choice?

Well, but ruby /is/ slow.. maybe a mixed code solution could fit..
Anyway I'd say "is this a place where smalltalk and common lisp would'nt
cut?"
Don't let the compiled==fast==static meme pass

 

[Francis Hwang]

Oh, for Pete's sake. I actually read that Tim Bray entry when it came
out on Thursday ... and by Friday I had no memory of it at all. I think
I need a vacation.

Anyway, I do wonder if Ruby is the right solution for this. In theory,
you can write your code in an easy-to-write language, and then optimize
as you need to. I've done this a lot, though it's always in fields
where the business requirements are volatile. Weblogs.com might
represent a case where the business requirements are fairly fixed and
the speed requirement is known up front, which might mean in the end
you'll win out by writing in a faster, harsher language.

Yes.

http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/02/WeblogsDotCom


James

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/