What makes a Microsoft technology stack a poor choice? Any site at the scale of MySpace is going to have hundreds of hacks to make it scale that no one wants to touch. MySpace was able to launch their 1.0 in days and become the leading social network (for a while), without major scaling issues.
Any site at the scale of MySpace is going to have hundreds of hacks to make it scale that no one wants to touch.
I disagree.
From what I saw while I was there, Google scales through good process and discipline. I'm sure there are hacks that I didn't see that make things more efficient. However if you are truly dependent on scary hacks just to keep running, then you will fall apart when your scale increases, those hacks fail, and nobody knows how to make it work. Which is why Google is so big on scaling through good process and discipline.
As for why Microsoft is possibly a poor choice, there is a lot more institutional experience out there for making Linux scale than making the Microsoft stack scale. Furthermore Microsoft forces you to pay a hefty licensing tax for very unclear returns. So you're paying money to sail into uncharted territory and hope you can make it work.
But all that said, if they have architectural problems, odds are very high that the biggest problems are in the software that they wrote rather than the technology stack they use.
I heard a rumor that they used to be on Cold Fusion? If true, a move from that to any other technology, including Microsoft stack, would be a good move.
While Los Angeles doesn't stereotypically have good developers, good developers exist here. Demand Media and Google have 300+ people offices here. I suspect the problem is, either MySpace didn't hire good developers/architects, or MySpace hired them but management didn't listen to them.
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Interesting conversation that could possibly takes hours to get to the bottom of. The MSFT bet was clearly a poor one at best.
What makes a Microsoft technology stack a poor choice? Any site at the scale of MySpace is going to have hundreds of hacks to make it scale that no one wants to touch. MySpace was able to launch their 1.0 in days and become the leading social network (for a while), without major scaling issues.
Any site at the scale of MySpace is going to have hundreds of hacks to make it scale that no one wants to touch.
I disagree.
From what I saw while I was there, Google scales through good process and discipline. I'm sure there are hacks that I didn't see that make things more efficient. However if you are truly dependent on scary hacks just to keep running, then you will fall apart when your scale increases, those hacks fail, and nobody knows how to make it work. Which is why Google is so big on scaling through good process and discipline.
As for why Microsoft is possibly a poor choice, there is a lot more institutional experience out there for making Linux scale than making the Microsoft stack scale. Furthermore Microsoft forces you to pay a hefty licensing tax for very unclear returns. So you're paying money to sail into uncharted territory and hope you can make it work.
But all that said, if they have architectural problems, odds are very high that the biggest problems are in the software that they wrote rather than the technology stack they use.
I heard a rumor that they used to be on Cold Fusion? If true, a move from that to any other technology, including Microsoft stack, would be a good move.
While Los Angeles doesn't stereotypically have good developers, good developers exist here. Demand Media and Google have 300+ people offices here. I suspect the problem is, either MySpace didn't hire good developers/architects, or MySpace hired them but management didn't listen to them.
Yes, I think they used to run CF.
I agree with the MSFT bet (.NET is such a heavy toolset), but I think the Los Angeles argument is also interesting.
Does starting a successful company depend on having a geographical talent base, heavily grouped together?
.NET is such a heavy toolset
What does that mean, specifically? I've found it is a great stack, and the biggest problem it has is public perception :)
Is it heavier than Java? People have run some pretty big and busy sites on Java fine (iTunes store, for example).
What do you mean by "heavy toolset"? There's too many already-written tools and utilities?