Does your stuff scale

p.ota.to grew from 1 developer to 70 - with django and google app engine

scalability

• load
• functional - add more features without too much effort
• organisational - do more, hire better people
• geographic

django and google app engine

why?

• auto-scaling
• services and APIs
• no sys admin

caveats

• sandbox - can’t run pip install
• file system - block store, but no traditional fs
• portability - lock in?

options for g a e

• django-nonrel - django fork with nosql back end

  • shallow learning curve, more reusable
  • BUT familiarity can be misleading, can feel ‘heavy’/kludgy

• djappengine

  • built in to app engine, use appengine data store directly
  • “best of both worlds”, use NDB
  • learning curve steeper, not portable

• app engine + cloud sql

  • google’s version of django
  • fully supported django
  • relational database
  • more set up, not as scalable as other options

technical scaling

load

• planning
• caching
• offline tasks
• preparation - load tests, profiling

functional

• django!

• app engine

  • services/apis

    • memcache, email, search, images ...

  • versioning

    • 10 testable versions per app
    • A/B testing, traffic splitting

  • sdk

scaling organisation and culture

organisational

• be a minimalist
• remove bottlenecks and overhead
• autonomy
• build lots of small apps internally - just do it
• “just make good things”

geographic

• build and deploy from anywhere - trains, pubs, beaches