Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

Re:Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development? by paulftw on Friday August 12, 2016 @09:02AM (#12275231)

This is based on the assumption that server without those optimizations is not fast enough. That used to be definitely true in the nineties, but hardware is getting faster while human reaction time stays relatively flat. Hardware is also getting cheaper, so throwing a beefier server is a much easier and better solution than investing months of error prone and non-scalable human labor.

Everyone is ditching those beautiful and smart CS principles on FE by switching to hybrid apps, walking entire DOM on every update, etc.

There's no reason same wouldn't happen on backend. In fact it already has - interpreted languages, GC, micro services.

For better or worse progress in software always meant worse efficiency, because hardware was always forgiving that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development? by caleblloyd on Friday August 12, 2016 @11:47AM (#12276575)

It matters a lot!

1. Response time. A dedicated machine that stores state in-memory from request to request can respond orders of magnitude quicker than one that does not.

2. Resource Efficiency. 1-2 machines running optimized code will cost less than the 10-20 machines (or 100-200 machines) the cloud provider will have to allocate behind the scenes to run less efficient code.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development? by GrumpyYoungMan on Friday August 12, 2016 @10:07AM (#12275720)

>hardware is getting faster

Considering that the end of Moore's Law is more or less here already, as pointed out in many HN articles, that's really no longer something we can take for granted.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development? by paulftw on Saturday August 13, 2016 @12:15PM (#12281974)

Moore law != progress

[ Parent | on HN ]