This. Just. This.
In response to an honest comment about some of Instagram's rather "ordinary engineering choices", mikeyk (Co-founder @ Instagram) had what I consider the perfect response:
We (at IG) aren't claiming to be doing revolutionary things on infrastructure--but one thing I found super valuable when scaling Instagram in the early days was having access to stories from other companies on how they've scaled. That's the spirit in which I encourage our engineers to blog about our DB scaling, our search infra, etc--I think the more open we are (as a company, but more broadly as an industry) about technical approaches + solutions, the better off we'll be.
This could be the anthem for HS and is a key reason our industry continues to get better. And in case you are interested, here are just a few of those stories from Instagram:
- Instagram Architecture: 14 Million Users, Terabytes Of Photos, 100s Of Instances, Dozens Of Technologies
- 3 Secrets To Lightning Fast Mobile Design At Instagram
- Instagram Improved Their App's Performance. Here's How
- Instagram Architecture Update: What’s New With Instagram?
- Instagram Strategy To Radically Reduce Traffic: Kill All The Spambots!
