Past threads:<p><i>Rewriting Reddit (2005)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8516331" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8516331</a> - Oct 2014 (114 comments - top comment has later story)<p><i>Rewriting Reddit (2005)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4797599" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4797599</a> - Nov 2012 (35 comments)
I used web.py heavily in the early days on many small websites and one large website at work (well after it was relatively unmaintained). It was an early "microframework" that was really nice to use, and simple to hack on as needed. I liked its KISS approach to pretty much everything, including database handling (a thin, Pythonic wrapper around SQL, not an ORM). It was quirky in places, though -- I suppose not unlike its original author.<p>I'd probably use Bottle now, for equivalent simplicity and hackability, or maybe Flask (though that's significantly larger).
It should be noted that this post used to say, "My friends over at reddit.com" (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20051210024226/http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20051210024226/http://www.aarons...</a>)<p>Aaron was so sensitive about not actually being a founder of reddit that he thought it necessary to rewrite his own history to erase that fact.
>One assumed it must have been divine intervention, since “there seems to be no other reason for switching to an inferior language.” Another figured something else must be going on: “Could this be…a lie? To throw off competition? It’s not as though Paul Graham hasn’t hinted at this tactic in his essays…” Another chimed in: “I decided it was a prank.” Another suggested the authors simply wanted more “cut corners, hacks, and faked artisanship.”<p>yc circle 15 years ago was apprently something different, something that reading about it now screams `wtf?`<p>feels like religious community
> The Python version had less code that ran faster and was far easier to read and maintain.<p>I'm surprised by the "ran faster" part. Does anyone has an explanation? My guess would be that part of it is a better understanding of the problem, part of it may be better libraries, and part of it may be that the FOSS Common Lisp compilers in 2005 were not as good as now, but that's just a guess.
It says a lot about the quality of that lisp code and the clarity it enables that a rewrite could be done effectively over a weekend. Normally the "Big Rewrite" is a story of total failure.<p>Even if they decided not to go with lisp long term this story is definitely a good advertisement for prototyping in lisp and sticking with it until there is an actual reason to change.