[erlang-questions] If you make WhatsApp today...

[Joe Armstrong]

On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 4:18 PM, Vimal Kumar <vimal7370@REDACTED> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Imagine that WhatsApp does not exist today. If you are asked to write
> WhatsApp in Erlang and scale it like how they successfully did, will you
> still be opting for Mnesia, or something else like Riak?

Neither - I'd define an API that I'd use and implement it with any
appropriate database. Then *if* the app took off and I ran into performance
problems I'd tweak whatever law behind the API. If the application never
flew I'd be saved the trouble of making an efficient back-end.

To implement the API I'd choose whatever I was most comfortable with.

My goal would be to get something up and running as soon as possible
and get users - and not worry about implementation details.

As the wise man said "Premature optimisation is the root of all evil".

I'd probably use the file system, then ets or dets and "roll my own" first.

Data bases using *only* the file system and simple locking can get you
a lot of milage before you need to optimize :-)


/Joe

>
> Thank you!
>
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