scalability

linq

Compiled or Bust?

While I may have mixed emotions toward LINQ to SQL, we've had great success with it on Stack Overflow. That's why I was surprised to read the following: If you are building an ASP.NET web application that's going to get thousands of hits

By Jeff Atwood ·
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scalability

Scaling Up vs. Scaling Out: Hidden Costs

In My Scaling Hero, I described the amazing scaling story of plentyoffish.com. It's impressive by any measure, but also particularly relevant to us because we're on the Microsoft stack, too. I was intrigued when Markus posted this recent update: Last monday we upgraded our core

By Jeff Atwood ·
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asp.net

My Scaling Hero

Inspiration for Stack Overflow occasionally comes from the unlikeliest places. Have you ever heard of the dating website, Plenty of Fish? Markus Frind built the Plenty of Fish Web site in 2003 as nothing more than an exercise to help teach himself a new programming language, ASP.NET. The site

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

Size Is The Enemy

Steve Yegge's latest, Code's Worst Enemy, is like all of his posts: rich, rewarding, and ridiculously freaking long. Steve doesn't write often, but when he does, it's a doozy. As I mentioned a year ago, I've started a cottage industry

By Jeff Atwood ·
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software development concepts

Steve McConnell in the Doghouse

I often trot out Steve McConnell's doghouse analogy [http://stevemcconnell.com/articles/art03.htm] to illustrate how small projects aren't necessarily representative of the problems [https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-long-dismal-history-of-software-project-failure/] you'll encounter on larger projects. > People who have written a few small programs

By Jeff Atwood ·
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code quality

Code Smaller

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last few years, you've probably heard about the game Katamari Damacy. The gameplay consists of little more than rolling stuff up into an ever-increasing ball of stuff. That's literally all you do. You start by

By Jeff Atwood ·
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software development concepts

Level 5 means never having to say you’re sorry

In Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef, Joel derides the least common denominator effect of formal methodologies: Mystery: why is it that some of the biggest IT consulting companies in the world do the worst work? 1. Some things need talent to do really well. 2. It’s hard to

By Jeff Atwood ·
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scalability

The Popularity Tax

I'm sure everyone reading this is familiar with the slashdot effect: When Slashdot links a site, often a lot of readers will hit the link to read the story or see the purty pictures. This can easily throw thousands of hits at the site in minutes. Most of

By Jeff Atwood ·
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