Things I learnt making a fast website
Why?<p>I was recently talking at a conference and got in an argument with another speaker (not publicly) because he had a technique to improve API response time. Thing is, said technique would delay the time to market on the product and make the code needlessly complicated to maintain. And I pointed out, that it is probably better for the bottom line of most companies to do the way that is slightly slower but easier to maintain and faster to get to market.<p>At which point he accused me of being another product shill (not a real software engineer) and shut down the debate.<p>Thing is, I have a computer science degree and take software engineering very seriously. I just also understand that companies have a bottom like and sometimes good is good enough.<p>So I ask, this &quot;world&#x27;s fastest web site&quot;... how much did it cost to develop in time&#x2F;money? How long is the return on investment? And is it going to be more successful because it is faster? Is it maintainable.<p>I&#x27;m guessing the answers are: too much, never, no and no.<p>With that said, I fully appreciate making thing fast as a challenge. If his goal was to challenge himself like some sort of game where beating the benchmarks is the only way to win. Then kudos. I love doing stuff just to show I can just as much as the next person.