On: Ask HN: Is HN slow for you lately? Or even not re...

[pg]

The computation for the orange usernames was destroying performance. Not directly, but because it caused a lot of stuff to get loaded from disk that would not otherwise have been. So I've temporarily turned the feature off till I can write a more efficient version.

[tlrobinson → pg]

It seems like it is something that could be computed once every few hours and cached without affecting the experience.

[Shamiq → pg]

Do you mind posting the current code for it? I'm sure some of us would love to give optimization a shot.

[pg → Shamiq]

I appreciate the offer, but it's not the kind of optimization that consists of taking one chunk of code and making it faster. The answer will consist of several little changes spread out throughout the code.

[palish → Shamiq]

Optimizing a program via messageboard would be like writing a program by mail.

[Shamiq → palish]

Or like a programming competition.

[jey → palish]

That's how most open source development happened for a long time.

[lsb → pg]

Apropos of this, has anyone had success by swapping a platter-based disk drive for a SSD?

[andreyf → pg]

caused a lot of stuff to get loaded from disk that would not otherwise have been

Why not just keep it all in memory? We talk a lot, but it doesn't seem like the database should be all that large...

[jonursenbach → pg]

How come you just didn't do the computations as a background process and let it run when each new comment comes in?