undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmoe15y ago0 comments

handling 1800 tweets a second [...] is no small task

It's funny how people consistently overestimate that. Actually, yes, it is a fairly trivial task and there's no justification for failwhaling over it when you have money to buy competent developers.

Many companies process orders of magnitudes more than that, under much harder constraints and much more complex requirements (think financial industry and telecoms).

0 comments

4 comments · 3 top-level

wooster15y ago· 1 in thread

It's funny how people who haven't built similar systems underestimate how difficult it is, Mr/Mrs Anonymous Internet Tough Person.

Phone companies and financial institutions don't typically have messages which affect millions of accounts, for a start.

moeOP15y ago

Actually I have built similar systems, on a smaller scale.

Phone companies and financial institutions don't typically have messages which affect millions of accounts, for a start.

You're saying that as if it was a relevant metric. It's not. What matters is the number of concurrently online subscribers and the aggregate throughput. Twitter doesn't go and append to 1mio inboxes when akutcher sends a tweet.

catch2315y ago

that number is probably averaged out. I bet it's probably more like 100,000 a second around peak hours and 500 a second in non-peak.

InclinedPlane15y ago

Most of the companies you cite make on the order of dollars per transaction. It's easy to build out infrastructure to handle that volume when you're making that kind of money.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse