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Comment by svdr | Hacker News Reader

I thought one billion was 1000M (and not 100M)?

This is an important comment. It's not a typo in the article, even the source code only does 100M rows, not 1B. The author definitely does not hit the target of 1B rows in a minute.

The author doesn’t say a billion is 100 million. They say they’d like to be able to insert a billion, and say they’re able to insert 100 million. It’s not a contradiction.

Ok but that is a rather clickbaity title. The title makes it sound like they are successfully doing that.

Hey, sorry for the misleading title. I started with ‘Fast SQLite Inserts’ and it had many iterations. In the title, I wanted to intend that I want to insert 1 billion rows under a minute on my machine. I thought the current title is fine, since I got LGTM for earlier drafts. The detail about on my machine is also important since mine is a two year old laptop and all the measurements are done on it.

Also I got another feedback that title should indicate that it is a test database and emphasise that it is not durable.

I am wondering the right way to convey all of this in the title yet also keep it short.

>I am wondering the right way to convey all of this in the title yet also keep it short.

Add "trying":

"Trying to insert 1 billion rows in SQL in under a minute".

If anything it's more interesting because it implies the chance of failure.

Thanks for the explanation. I think it only needs a minor tweak. Maybe prefix with “trying to” or something like that. I am empathetic to the challenge of naming things concisely and accurately.

Hey, I read all the suggestions and prefixed the title with "Towards ...". I hope it makes it clear now

Attempting 1 Billion Row Inserts in under 1 Minute

Achieving 100m SQLite inserts in under a minute.

I hate hyperbole but i think the title is fine.

Perhaps "Towards Inserting 1B Rows in SQLite in Under a Minute" would be a better title.

Thanks for this suggestion and I have updated the title!

I agree. While the title reflects the eventual goal of the effort, the goal has yet to be achieved (and may or may not be achievable at all). I think it’s a bit irresponsible to use a title like that for a post that neglects to have achieved what was described in the title.

Perhaps "Working towards 1B rows in under a minute" would have been better.

Earning $10M/month with a saas

This depends a lot.

For English-speaking countries, 1B = 1M * 1k

For Spanish-speaking countries, 1B = 1M * 1M

For other languages it's a big "it varies", though the second definition seems to be the most common. The term "billion" is honestly, as ambiguous as using "06-03" for a date.

Also note that, historically, English also followed the second definition, so for old literature it's also confusing.

Exactly.

  thousand = 1000
  million  = 1000 * thousand (or 1000^2)
  billion  = 1000 * million (or 1000^3)
  trillion = 1000 * billion (or 1000^4)

(not to discount regional differences)

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/everett_dirksen_201172

1,000,000 million. In old money.

Ref: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

Yeah, that's my interpretation of a billion too. I vaguely recall that India or Britain interprets a billion differently though. Maybe that's what they're thinking?

I think it's the same in UK English as well. But in some (most?) European languages billion actually means 1 000 000 million (so a thousand times more). And we use "milliard" for 1000 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale for anyone that's interested in the differences

It looks like you're right. Just looked it up. A billion is 1million^2 in its etymology so English speakers are the odd one out.

He hasn't reached the goal yet, and is currently doing 100 million in ~34 seconds.

> Looking forward to discussions and/or collaborations with curious souls in my quest to generate a billion record SQLite DB quickly. If this sounds interesting to you, reach out to me on Twitter or submit a PR.

In Swedish, and I think in German and other languages too, 1 billion is 1e12. 1e9 is called milliard / miljard in Swedish.

Yes, in Germany too.

And in the Netherlands.

Also in Bulgaria

Just about everyone in the UK defines a billion to be 10^9. I've heard about the 10^12 definition but never encountered anyone who uses it - I think it must have been an older usage that fell out of favour.

In 1974, the UK government abandoned the long scale (million, milliard, billion, billiard) in favor of the short scale (million, billion, trillion, quadrillion) used in the US. The long scale is still used in languages like Dutch, German, and French.

And in 2001, The 51st State was released...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_51st_State

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