Hardware isn’t Cheap
I’ve spent the weekend researching libraries, frameworks, and languages intended to improve the web development experience. Many of these frameworks impose classic fork() concurrency model, holding the mantra that “Hardware is cheap”.
When developers say “Hardware is cheap” in response to poor architectural choices, what they’re really saying is that “Our hardware costs are externalized”. These web developers are rarely responsible for the direct increases in operational costs due to terminally inefficient use of server capacity.
This position presents a false dichotomy: a choice between achieving passable performance through good design, versus optimizing for developer effeciency. Effecient use of resources and ease of development are not mutually exclusive, though they may require different approaches to familiar problems.
