I've been getting increasing loss of news yc availability in the last few days. Is it just me, or is the server getting overloaded? (This was espeically a bummer as I was filling out the YC application)
Response time is not the only thing that could be affected by server load. Those infamous threading problems (deadlock, race..) also are a possibility.
PG has mentioned before that it's a custom web server written in Arc. It's not unusual for web server software to go down while the host machine keeps working - especially when it's experimental software written in an unfinished programming language.
Pretty sure he must be laughing itself out right now reading it. PG, you're a hero for many people, you know? How about you giving your own contribution to this list?
By the way, I just noticed that there is no way to recover a password if you lost it?
He is also pure virtual class, which needs no overloaded virtual destructor implementations. All dispatches are written doubly, and there are no leaks, whatsoever.
Paul Graham partitioned the Banach-Tarski ball, reassembled it back to two identical copies of itself and then sold the other copy to Yahoo for 100 million bucks.
This seems to be a recurring theme with Lisp implementations. Reddit switched from CMUCL to Python (threading); Vendetta Online switched from SBCL to Erlang (GC/memory leaks). Other people have hit major snags e.g. with Haskell/GHC runtime bugs (Wager Labs; switched to Erlang). Use a massively complex runtime, hit bugs that can't be fixed (in a start-up timeframe, anyhow)?
Not necessarily -- some organizations would patch it themselves in a private branch just to maintain an edge, assuming they have the expertise in-house. I've done this before with GPLed libraries. That's assuming you can even track down the problem -- Vendetta Online couldn't pin it down well enough to submit a coherent bug report (in fairness, SBCL is a monstrosity; just as a comparison, how many Rails developers could track down CRuby bugs?).
> how many Rails developers could track down CRuby bugs?
Probably a lot of them, if they tried. Because Ruby is so poorly specified, I frequently read the interpreter source code to figure out how things are supposed to behave. CRuby is really well-written in some ways and really poorly-written in others. It's poorly written in the sense that it's a painfully slow line-by-line interpreter. It's well written in the sense that the code is very clean and well-organized: I can usually find answers in the source faster than I can find answers in the pick-axe book.
This is a recurring theme with cutting-edge software. Arc is probably exercising parts of the mzscheme code that haven't been exercised before. Bugs will be fixed and things will be better.
I rewrote my senior project in Common Lisp two weeks before the due date because I was running into too many bugs in mzscheme. Then I switched from clisp to SBCL because of a bug in clisp.
Source? With the bashing Python is getting because of the GIL, it surprises me that someone would switch to Python from elsewhere for any reasons related to threading.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadStrangely, response time is still very good, so don't think it is due to server load..
It's interesting the server responds to pings, but the webserver seems to be shot when it's down.
Paul Graham is so good, he does just simply walk into Mordor. And then he checks into a hotel.
Paul Graham is so good, it's hard to defun him.
Paul Graham's so smart that inside his brain is another brain.
Paul Graham once matched /(x+x+)+y/ in logarithmic time.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ajwatson/cat-powered.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_numeral
http://www.voguehost.com/ims/u/ptn/ptn/pg_hacking.gif
So there's really hope for Arc to be finished in his life time, now!
Paul Graham is so good, his DNA has an implementation of Lisp.
Chuck Norris wanted to be like Paul Graham, and tried to learn tail recursion. The best he could do was a roundhouse kick.
Paul Graham can find Waldo. Always.
By the way, I just noticed that there is no way to recover a password if you lost it?
Paul Graham named his fists: "(" and ")"
I just map all values to 0.
(I am agnostic. I googled for this biblical verse... uncannily, it is from the book of John.)
There is no god but Paul Graham, and Paul Graham is His prophet.
Creationists are baffled by the question: "Who created Paul Graham?"
Paul Graham can be written in ten lines using macros.
Paul Graham can make NaN finally equal itself.
Paul Graham will resurrect Usenet on Judgment Day.
Paul Graham is the World Champion in Ambition.
I wouldn't call Erlang and Python Blubs.
Probably a lot of them, if they tried. Because Ruby is so poorly specified, I frequently read the interpreter source code to figure out how things are supposed to behave. CRuby is really well-written in some ways and really poorly-written in others. It's poorly written in the sense that it's a painfully slow line-by-line interpreter. It's well written in the sense that the code is very clean and well-organized: I can usually find answers in the source faster than I can find answers in the pick-axe book.
http://www.welton.it/articles/programming_language_economics...
One of the reasons we try and convince other people to use our tools.
Source? With the bashing Python is getting because of the GIL, it surprises me that someone would switch to Python from elsewhere for any reasons related to threading.
Straight from PG:
"Incidentally, the last straw, I've been told, was some bug in CMUCL threads that kept making the system crash."
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/574d19d5e7...
From Reddit: http://blog.reddit.com/2005/12/on-lisp.html