You ask a room full of engineers "So how's this gonna scale?" and step out for a glass of water. When you're back, all hell has broken loose.
Bob is choking Harry. Lucy screams obscenities at John. Jane is furiously scribbling binary trees on the whiteboard, Stuart rocks crying in the corner, and Kevin the office plant is on fire.
What the heck happened?
You committed one of 3 classic blunders:
- Never get involved in a land war in Asia
- Never challenge a Sicilian in a battle of wits
- Never mention scalability in a room full of engineers
Scalability means different things to different people
You see my friend, when you say "scalable", you know exactly what you mean. And everyone around you hears something else.
A piece of code or architecture can be scalable in many ways.
The 3 biggest dimensions are:
- Vertical scalability
- Horizontal scalability
- Team scalability
They're independent and the cause of many a heated debate.
Let me explain:
1. vertical scalability
Vertical scalability is how much you can get out of a single machine. Primary considerations here are algorithmic complexity, programming language choice, execution environment, and machine beefiness.
When you buy a new iPhone coz the old one got slow, that's vertical scalability.
When you bicker about JavaScript "not scaling", that's vertical scalability.
When you chat about Quicksort, Bubble Sort, and Hash Tables, that's vertical scalability.
How much work can we get out of the machine?
2. horizontal scalability
Horizontal scalability is how much you can get out of multiple machines. Primary considerations here are developer experience, managing servers, coordinating tasks, communication between nodes, and cost.
When you split large payloads into small tasks, that's horizontal scalability.
When you bicker about AWS Lambda vs. Docker VMs, that's horizontal scalability.
When you think about coordinating 5 servers, 10 load balancers, 3 queues, and 8 kuberneteses, that's horizontal scalability.
How much work can we get out of many machines working together?
3. team scalability
Team scalability is how much you can get out of multiple engineers. Primary concerns here are developer experience, communication, avoiding common mistakes, pull requests, tools over processes, and common guidelines.
When you add automatic deploys to your workflow, that's team scalability.
When you start using TypeScript to lower mental overhead, that's team scalability.
When you build a library everyone can use, that's team scalability.
When you split a monolith into microservices, that's team scalability. No really 😉
How can we get all these engineers to work together without stepping on each other's toes killing each other?
So my friend, which of these do you spend most effort on? Hit reply.
Happy Friday ❤️
Cheers,
~Swizec
Learned something new?
Want to become a high value JavaScript expert?
Here's how it works 👇
Leave your email and I'll send you an Interactive Modern JavaScript Cheatsheet 📖right away. After that you'll get thoughtfully written emails every week about React, JavaScript, and your career. Lessons learned over my 20 years in the industry working with companies ranging from tiny startups to Fortune5 behemoths.
Start with an interactive cheatsheet 📖
Then get thoughtful letters 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only email I open from marketers and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"
Have a burning question that you think I can answer? I don't have all of the answers, but I have some! Hit me up on twitter or book a 30min ama for in-depth help.
Ready to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization
Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, modern backend for the frontend engineer.
Ready to learn how it all fits together and build a modern webapp from scratch? Learn how to launch a webapp and make your first 💰 on the side with ServerlessReact.Dev
Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com
By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️