Building Scalable Web Sites
Building, scaling, and optimizing the next generation of web applications
by Cal Henderson · first published 2006
74% recommend26% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Accessible introduction to scaling web applications, drawn from the author's experience growing Flickr. Suits newcomers to scalability, and its PHP examples are not too PHP-specific. It predates cloud but still holds up.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
From the back cover: "Learn the tricks of the trade so you can build and architect applications that scale quickly - without all the high-priced headaches and service-level agreements associated with enterprise app servers and proprietary programming and database products. Culled from the experience of the [flickr.com][1] lead developer, Building Scalable Websites offers techniques for creating fast sites that your users will enjoy." [1]: http://flickr.com
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2011–2020The art of scalability
Martin L. Abbott
Recommended by 3 · mentioned by 33 recommend · 3 mention3 recommend · 33 recommend
Scalable Internet architectures
Theo Schlossnagle
Recommended by 9 · mentioned by 99 recommend · 9 mention9 recommend · 99 recommend
2010–2015Web operations
John Allspaw
Recommended by 3 · mentioned by 73 recommend · 7 mention3 recommend · 73 recommend
2007–2026High Performance MySQL
Jeremy D. Zawodny, Derek J. Balling, Baron Schwartz, Peter Zaitsev
Recommended by 27 · mentioned by 4027 recommend · 40 mention27 recommend · 4027 recommend
2014–2026Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Martin Kleppmann
Recommended by 457 · mentioned by 659457 recommend · 659 mention457 recommend · 659457 recommend
…My closest point of reference is Django/Python, and professionally I've spent the most time in C# and personally in Common Lisp (of course recently exploring Clojure). I enjoyed Cal Henderson's book Building Scalable Web Sites, which is PHP-based but not too PHP-specific. With that background, let me ask for the community's judgment and experience: Is there a recommended experienced programmer's guide to PHP with limitations,…
on “Ask HN: Learning PHP, reluctantly, for a lisp hacker” ↗…list' http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html [1] Joel On Software, 'Management reading list' http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum.html [3] Cal Henderson, 'Building Scalable Web Sites, 978-0596102357': http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applications/dp/0596102356
on “Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?” ↗Read Cal Henderson's book "Building Scalable Web Sites".
on “How can I learn to scale my project?” ↗…of failure? 6) how much developer time are you willing to put into things like adding aggressive caching and fixing performance bottlenecks? For the technical side of things, make sure you've read "Building Scalable Web Sites", by Cal Henderson. It will help you spend your resources much more effectively.
on “hardware/bandwidth % of revenue” ↗You might want to read Cal Henderson's book Building Scalable Web Sites: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596102356/
on “Ask HN:Infrastructure for a software project” ↗- Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, scaling, and optimizing the next generation of web applications by Cal Henderson - Scalable Internet Architectures (Developer's Library) by Theo Schlossnagle http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/…
on “Ask HN: how to push to a live site?” ↗For frontend stuff: High Performance Web Sites Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers (By Steve Souders) http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529307 And for an intro to scalability: Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, Scaling, and Optimizing the Next Generation of Web Applications (By Cal Henderson) http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applicatio...
on “Ask HN: How to learn to web dev for real ?” ↗If scalability is relevant to your product, this is an accessible classic: http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applicatio...
on “Recommended Reading” ↗I recommend these two books: - Scalability Rules: 50 Principles for Scaling Web Sites by Martin L. Abbott & Michael T. Fisher - Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, Scaling, and Optimizing the Next Generation of Web Applications [Paperback] by Cal Henderson I think they are the best resources I have found about the topic. If you are using .Net, like me…
on “Ask HN: How do you scale your web app?” ↗Slightly dated, but I recommend Cal's book on the lessons we learned scaling Flickr, http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applicatio... Also remember that premature scaling is one of the leading causes of failure.
on “Ask HN: How to learn web scalability?” ↗On the backend side, Cal Henderson published the details of Flickr's architecture in "Building Scalable Web Sites". It was a reference at the time, the "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" of another generation.
on “Celebrating Interesting Flickr Technologies” ↗…cases for all its cuomers. This isn't the type of complexity that expands your mind, though: it's death by thousand papercuts. If you want mind-expanding complexity, read SICP, learn Haskell, buy Building Scalable Web Sites by Cal Henderson and read through the LiveJournal source code, learn JQuery and read through the source code, and pick a fast open-source webserver like Lighttpd or Nginx and read through its source code.
on “job offer advice needed” ↗It seems like a lot of this information is pulled directly from Cal's book "Building Scalable Web Sites" (Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applications/dp/0596102356/). If you are interested in gaining some of the spoken context behind the slides, this is a great read. It was…
on “Scaling web apps (sets of slides by Flickr architect)” ↗Hi, I have a close friend who started to learn programming. He want to be a backend web developer. It’s a great book about building scalable websites https://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applications/dp/0596102356 but it was written in 2005 and now we have clouds and containers. So, a question is. Is there a modern version of this book or on this topic? Could you recommend any title?…
on “Ask HN: A modern book how to build a scalable web application?” ↗I'm a big fan of Building Scalable Web Sites - it's a bit old now (it predates cloud-computing-for-everything) but still very relevant if you're just starting to learn about this stuff. It's basically everything the author learned scaling Flickr…
on “Disqus: Scaling the World’s Largest Django Application” ↗