Twisted vs. Tornado: You're Both Idiots | Hacker News Reader

Twisted vs. Tornado: You're Both Idiots

teddziuba.com

42 pointsvulpes14 comments

I think it is generally a bad idea for any entrepreneur to read things that Ted writes because if you surround yourself with the kind of blind negativity he perpetuates, you probably won't ever build anything interesting out of fear of attack. For all the YC folks here, develop thick skin and ignore shit like this.

Ignoring all the anti-FriendFeed comments, which are ironic on many levels, we didn't build Tornado to optimize requests/second. That is just something the community has focused on post-launch. We built it to handle large numbers of standing connections for FriendFeed's real-time features. That is an area that is hardly as well-developed or solved, and I am happy we contributed some useful code given how many people are becoming interested in the space.

'Comet' is sill largely misunderstood really. The idea that your webserver might have tens of thousands of HTTP connections all intentionally held open for a few minutes or until data is ready, to some people seems completely foreign. Doing all that in a single thread is also often a strange concept for them to grasp.

But, it's increasingly going to be the norm as the <buzz-word-alert> "Real Time Web!!!" emerges.

It's cool to have another open source option for people who want to do real time stuff.

"""Anyway, when it comes to Twisted vs. Tornado for a Python web framework, I use Django. Why? Because it works, and my time is valuable."""

Who is the idiot here? I don't think the author understands the real power of async frameworks.

You can't use Django for anything that requires a massive amount of longer running connections. This is an area where frameworks like Twisted or Tornado shine. Comparing the two is silly.

While finding Ted's writing to be entertaining is a matter of taste, his point stands.

To paraphrase: Twisted, while not being the nicest code in the world, works well. Tornado tries to do the same and may be marginally better. That time may have been better spent getting more visitors.

> That time may have been better spent getting more visitors.

Really? They did in fact just sell off to facebook, which has way more users than Twitter. Result: NET WIN.

edit: Not attacking your comment, as you were just paraphrasing. Just seemed like an obvious place to point out the obvious flaw in that.

Not every sale is an indicator of success. Even if it were, more visitors would've made the company more valuable.

I can't read this article because teddziuba.com is blocked at work for some weird reason. Probably the same reason why uncov got blocked awhile back.

Without reading the article I can tell you I probably wouldn't say that the author is an idiot. However, I would probably say he is an opinionated asshole. Inflammatory titles are just used to get people to read his stuff.

Basically, if Ted writes something, you can bet that he's calling someone an idiot or worse. It's boring after a while.

It started off by making fun of people who post things on blogs... in a blog post. I stopped reading after that.

I thought It was funny with uncov while Pressflip was in development and was trashing everyone elses startup. Less funny on El'Reg after leaving PressFlip(which appears to not be doing so great)

Shitting on things other people built is in such poor taste, imo. People built and released code that at least some other people are sure to find worthwhile. He's saying his time is valuable, yet he's using it to talk down the efforts of developers that released their code to the world?

Whatever.

Wake me up when Ted contributes something to the world other than sophomoric rants.

Being the person who blogged twice re: twisted.web vs tornado, I find Ted's post comical but irrelevant. I appreciate a lot of the other comments people have made on this thread.

On the greater state of the HN community... I find that several people have had pretty negative things to say about the work that I've done, rather than offering constructive feedback. Thankfully I have some thick skin, but it's otherwise demotivating and disenfranchising. It certainly doesn't encourage others to put themselves and their ideas/work out there.

HN is a community of really smart people and by sharing the work we do, we could/can all benefit from each other. For those who keep it positive, thank you...

Did Ted just confuse an MVC (Django) with a non-blocking web server?

Honestly, if that's your attitude ("don't take any risks by going after technical challenges, keep cranking out business logic"), you should be working for/attempting to start the likes of Siebel or SAP and not be working for/attempting to start a technology start-up. I don't mean that in a negative way: see http://philip.greenspun.com/business/startup-tips/

If you're building a product where you already know your customer and which features it needs, yes, don't take any technological risks. If you're making a product which has never been made before, you're already taking an enormous risk-- you should use every bit of your technical expertise to your advantage.

Actually, Tornado is both a nonblocking web server and a complete web framework. He didn't confuse them so much as focus on the part you're not interested in.

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