
Our corporate WebSite runs on Clojure and Google App Engine - fogus
http://www.hackers-with-attitude.com/2009/09/our-corporate-website-runs-on-clojure.html
======
moe
That headline didn't kick me much (well, so you can build a website on
clojure, duh!) but while clicking through that site I was fascinated by their
writing about the company philosophy.

[http://www.freiheit.com/tag/Jobs#ag9mZGN3ZWJzaXRldGVzdDFyDQs...](http://www.freiheit.com/tag/Jobs#ag9mZGN3ZWJzaXRldGVzdDFyDQsSB2FydGljbGUYJww)

The english translation is horrible but here some highlights from the Jobs-
page:

* The day begins at 9:00AM, not later, preferably earlier.

* Release dates are never(!) shifted.

* We believe in the "Broken Window"-theory. Companies degenerate, too. That begins with a paperclip laying around. Consequently every employee must _empty_ their desk before they leave.

Along these lines there's this cultish subtone in all of their writing which
is hard to translate. Reading their blurbs gave me the chills like no other
company description I've ever read. Definitely has a "zombie B-movie" taste to
it.

~~~
radu_floricica
I don't really have a problem with that. I'm self-employed most of the times,
but during the occasional "sortof hired" periods I like to take work ethics
seriously. And I definitely don't mind a nice quiet clean office - again, not
at all something I'd do on my own, but I definitely wouldn't mind such a
policy. There is a bit of zen in 5 minutes of cleaning up at the end of the
day.

------
sketerpot
Does anybody _actually_ like tag clouds? I've always wondered.

~~~
tybris
I've never even clicked a tag cloud.

~~~
sketerpot
I clicked a tag cloud once. It wasn't that great.

------
boggles
I assume they have a cron job running to keep the site alive - Google App
Engine for Java has a nasty habit of putting your app to sleep and then it
takes 20 or 30 seconds to wake it up (at least that's what happens with JRuby
- I don't know about Clojure).

------
tybris
Is it me or is it really slow?

------
ilyak
I'm curoius why everyone resizes images when they're uploaded.

I think the better way is not in any way changing the uploaded file, instead
resizing it when it's actually requested by a client. This way, your pages can
ask server for whatever actual size they need in the moment instead of setting
image size once in stone. Like, if you've uploaded kitty.jpg, you can then ask
for kitty_120x50.jpg or kitty_300x.jpg or kitty_x200.jpg (with missing
dimension being calculated to preserve ratio).

If course, resized files are stored along with the original to avoid costly
resizing process each time. If there's already a copy with required sizes,
it's served really, really fast.

~~~
ericwaller
I think amazon.com does something like this. I read an article that dissected
their product image urls to explain how their image service worked but I can't
find it now. If I remember correctly the service could resize/rotate, add sale
"stickers," and a bunch of other stuff.

EDIT found the article: <http://aaugh.com/imageabuse.html>

~~~
ilyak
Yeah, adding stickers on the fly is also the way to go.

