
Why We Shut Down Charm on the Eve of Public Launch, at $48k/Year and Growing - sethev
http://unicornfree.com/2013/why-we-shut-down-charm-on-the-eve-of-public-launch-at-48kyear-and-growing
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gyardley
The "don't do it if it's going to make you miserable" stance is a nice switch
from the usual "startups are suffering so go read some Marcus Aurelius"
attitude we get around here.

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ahoyhere
As somebody who's read Marcus Aurelius, I feel like if you read it, it ought
to make you realize how pointless pointless suffering is.

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protonfish
I am not sure if I buy the "it's nobody's fault" explanation. From what I
gather, what they built simply did not work, even though it was clearly
feasible. They had a failure of engineering and could not afford to rebuild
the entire app. I know nothing about the specifics of the architecture, but I
do know first-hand that if using Rails as the basis of an efficient and high-
capacity SaaS backend, it is the wrong decision.

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ahoyhere
I was going to write a sarcastic reply saying "Whoops! Better tell all [major
companies using Rails] that they made the wrong decision" but honestly, is it
worth my breath? Haha.

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jwaldrip
Funny, but I disagree. Rails scales, if you know how... We serve millions of
customers each month and have implemented a reliable and stable architecture.

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protonfish
Anything scales if you know how, but why choose to use a buggy, bloated mess
if you don't have to?

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seancron
What would you recommend?

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protonfish
Great question. In my career so far I have deployed Web apps in ASP Classic,
PHP, ASP.NET and Ruby on Rails. It appears that RoR can only handle a small
fraction of activity compared to the other technologies before maxing out
system resources. There are some lighter weight Ruby frameworks out there
(Rack, Sinatra) that are probably more appropriate for large-scale back ends.
Still, I have not worked with any Web technology that is performant enough to
confidently endorse.

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contingencies
It would be a terrible shame if you tanked a viable business because of
availability concerns, because these sorts of problems are well solved. Highly
available systems are designed in such a way that any individual component may
fail without bringing the overall system down. (ie. "Kernel issues? Detect,
remotely reboot server." Yes! There's free code for that. No. Many run of the
mill sysadmins probably aren't familiar with it.)

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ahoyhere
Asked with all sincerity… did you read my article?

"A kernel issue" was not "the problem." There was no "the problem". There were
a slew of problems of which that was merely the icing on the nasty problem
cake.

And considering how many times I lauded our sys admin as an expert and top
talent, not sure why you would think he was "run of the mill." Nope, we hired
somebody who had one of the best possible track records in the RoR world. We
had a redundant architecture from day 1. My demand was that we have a system
ready to work at scale so we wouldn't be growing and 8 or 9 months in, have to
migrate servers, complete with customers. Not my cup of tea. Unfortunately,
that caution didn't help (and maybe it hurt).

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aymeric
Why not sell the web app? Surely some developer would be happy to keep it
running and live off it.

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ahoyhere
Hi, y'all. Amy here. If you've got a real question, I'd be glad to answer it.

EDIT: As of 4pm eastern I'm off to meet my interior designer and then attend a
joinery demo at a wood shop so it may be a bit but I will absolutely read &
respond to your questions later or tomorrow. My goal is to share. And maybe
mock people a little, if they can't think up an original insult when they
attack me.

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bdavisx
No questions, but hopefully the naysayers and trolls won't bother you this
time around. I've certainly got to the point where I DGAF about other peoples
opinions - at least people on the internet. Heck, I prefer Java for developing
applications, but around here a large number of people would consider me an
idiot for just thinking about Java, let alone actually using it.

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ahoyhere
Thanks for the sentiment. They may show up, but they never bother me!

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sleighboy
Pure flame-bait for HN readers, sysadmins, developers, founders. Not worth
reading.

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ahoyhere
Totally. Nobody on HN likes to read post-mortems or understand what goes wrong
on a large, revenue-generating product, or in partnerships, or growth. Or hear
opinions from somebody who's bootstrapped a biz to $750,000/yr gross. Nope.
Definitely not of interest.

