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by quietbritishjim
297 days ago
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> At scale, you can continue to operate, but the amount of man-hours going into keeping the lights on can grow exponentially. Is the simplest thing possible still the DB? Don't worry, the second half of the title has this covered: > ... that could possibly work In the scenario you've described, the technology is not working, in the complete sense including business requirements of reasonable operating costs. Perhaps it really did work at first, in the complete sense, when the number of users was quite small. That's where the actual content of the article kicks in: it suggests you really do use that simple solution, because maybe you'll never need to scale after all, or you'll need to rewrite everything by then anyway, or you'll have access to more engineering talent by then, etc. I'd tend to agree, but with the caveat that you should feel free to break the rule so long as you're doing it consciously. But none of that implies that you should end up in the situation you described. |
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This is where I am arguing nuance. These decisions are contextual; and the superficially more complicated solution may be solving inherent complexity in the problem space that only provides benefit over a time period.
As an example, some team might decide to forgo a database and read/write directly to the file system. This may enable a release in less time and that might be the right decision in certain contexts. Or it could be a terrible decision as the externalised costs begin to manifest and the business fails because of loss of customer trust.
My point is that you cannot only look at what is right in front of you, you also need to tactically plan ahead. In the big org context, you also need to strategically plan ahead.