You wouldn’t believe how many near-FAANGS have hundreds of large backend services on Python without any issues and from times where typing was in docstrings.
I one had a database-backed website serving 50k unique visitors/day written in Django and hosted on a low-budget vps. Worked like a charm with very few hiccups.
I was curious so i had a bash at comparing the cost of just buying another server to throw at the problem vs telling a FAANG dev to optimise the code.
A dedicated 40core / 6Tb server is around $2k but will be amortized over the years of its life.
It needs power, cooling, someone to install it in a rack, someone to recycle it afterwards, ..., around $175/yr
A FAANG dev varies wildly but $400k seems fair-ish (given how many have TC > 750k).
So that's about 12 hours of time optimising the code vs throwing another 40c / 6Tb machine at the problem for 365 days.
The big cost i'm missing out of both the server and the developer is the building they work in. What's the recharge for a desk at a FAANG, $150k/yr ? I have no idea how much a rack slot works out at.
Unless i've screwed up the figures anywhere, we should probably all be looking at replacing Python with Ruby if we can squeeze more developer productivity!
baisq|3 years ago
bjourne|3 years ago
CraigJPerry|3 years ago
A dedicated 40core / 6Tb server is around $2k but will be amortized over the years of its life. It needs power, cooling, someone to install it in a rack, someone to recycle it afterwards, ..., around $175/yr
A FAANG dev varies wildly but $400k seems fair-ish (given how many have TC > 750k).
So that's about 12 hours of time optimising the code vs throwing another 40c / 6Tb machine at the problem for 365 days.
The big cost i'm missing out of both the server and the developer is the building they work in. What's the recharge for a desk at a FAANG, $150k/yr ? I have no idea how much a rack slot works out at.
Unless i've screwed up the figures anywhere, we should probably all be looking at replacing Python with Ruby if we can squeeze more developer productivity!