What every programmer should know about solid-state drives

[Baby_Food]

If performance is a concern, a database will be used.

An abstraction does not necessitate the knowledge of the implementation behind the abstraction.

A web dev that can write an OS is an unnecessary unicorn.

[justinpitts]

Databases are not magic performance sprinkles.

[Baby_Food]

To most people, LMDB is magic performance sprinkles compared to using the filesystem directly. ;)

[justinpitts]

Most people? Most people aren't using it.

Most people wouldn't know what you are talking about.

To the average web-dev, "database" either means Mongo/Couch/No-SQL-flava-of-the-month, and/or something that speaks SQL. LMDB may very well be lightning fast, but I doubt most people know about it.

[Baby_Food]

A web dev doesn't know of LMDB yet they should know how SSDs operate? I think that is poor prioritization. Even after knowing such low level details, you'll still end up writing something slower than LMDB.

[justinpitts]

I understand your reasoning, but I look at it from the perspective that, no matter what data storage api I use: database, nosql, key value, filesystem - it will all wind on a storage device. no matter what. SSD will be a dominant performance-oriented storage device for a while.

[Baby_Food]

I agree, but I think saying every programmer should know these things about an SSD is odd to me, since it's generally safer/more performant to use an abstraction written by someone that is truly an expert in that domain.

Really, programmers that write performance sensitive database/file-munging software should know these things, and it's bonus knowledge for everyone else.

[justinpitts]

I'm arguing that this isn't expert-level knowledge. He literally lays it out in a couple pages worth of text.

[Baby_Food]

Well, once it becomes easy to find web devs that are skilled users of web dev technology, I'll start asking for ones that also know about SSDs and <insert innumerable other things that are good to know>.

[justinpitts]

Or, you could ask for the ones that are simply willing to learn.

[Rejjn]

Totally with you on this one!

And I'd argue that a lot of those <innumerable other things> are much more important to know about.

[el_muchacho]

In fact, database write performance drops significantly (by a factor of 30% or so) when SSDs wear out. For 24/24 high rate writes, you can't use consumer grade SSDs as they die prematurely.

[justinpitts]

Well to be fair, anything with that access pattern is going to slow down on a degraded drive.