NYCPHP Meetup

[inforequest]

Hans Zaunere hans-at-nyphp.com |nyphp 04/2004| wrote:

> Probably the primordial example of scaling is Google. 6000+ servers,
>
>none of which (that I'm aware) are much more than nearly throw away i386
>boxes.  And what language does most of it run?  Basic, old school, C
>(although some Python/PHP is coming in house I hear).  This is a perfect
>case where good architecture and design is what scaling is all about.
>  
>

Or, a complete focus on *function* which boils down to http requests, 
querying a database and inserting functionality into the results set via 
html. If that is all you do, and you do tons of it, then you do it 
fast/cheap/efficient and that means as low level a language as you can 
bear on your platform (so they chose C.. pretty bare bones and 
completely in control).

Let's not forget that when a company gets as big as Google, they own the 
platform so they do not need to accommodate anything that is not 
functional (unlike the rest of us, who must accommodate Windows bloat, 
PHP bloat, PyThon bloat, or the whims of the consumer marketplace). 
Usually companies had to go that route by makng specialized custom 
hardware, and the volume + dominance coming from being the absolute best 
at that "thing" paid for the extra expenses. Google's "custom hardware" 
is made of common components.

I think it must be very interesting to discuss the pros/cons of COTS 
(commercial off the shelf technology) at Google. Yes then went COTS, but 
they did so on a platform that is out of date (x86 architecture?). Where 
is the threshold?.... 6000+ old servers with old power consumption, old 
connector requirements, old cooling requirements, old failure rates, old 
memory/component requirements, need for C experts, etc.... at some point 
I imagine a strong case can be made for replacing it with a modern 
solution. If they did that, however, they would lose some of their 
fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants flexibility. Let's face it, they used to 
have to worry about what they would be tomorrow, but now it's pretty 
clear they will always need to be Google the search engine that 
communicates via http and serves up query results with inserted XHTML 
codes in the results set.

Ever hear the joke about why Google programs in C? Because it's the only 
language that Ph.D's know how to code.