When you are running a distributed service in a datacenter, you encounter a lot of interesting problems. At Audiogalaxy, I ran into all the standard application level bugs, crashes, and race conditions. Once we had a certain number of machines, we even had to deal with flaky memory, disks, and networking cards. But all of that was pretty typical compared to the weirdest bug I ever had to deal with – the one that was caused by Quake III Arena.
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Tackling a big, new programming challenge frequently means that you don’t actually understand the problem until after you solve it. Because of that, one of the most important things to do after nailing down a solution is to think about better solutions. Post-mortems seem to be more popular from a “how could we have managed this project better” angle, but the technical aspect should not be overlooked.
Sure, constant criticism of everything you do may not make you a happier person, but even if you don’t actually implement your new ideas, reevaluating your designs will make you a stronger architect. Just try to keep the habit from spilling over too much into your personal life. 
Continue reading ‘Lessons Learned Scaling the Audiogalaxy Search Engine’
