alt Hacker News> Domain expertise is hard but not that hard compared to the insane mental discipline required to write efficient scalable code
"efficient scalable code" is just as vague as good code. How are you going to know your code is scalable if you don't understand your domain? Scalability is not something you sprinkle onto code.
Replies
Are you kidding me. What has domain got to do with efficiency and scalability.
Efficiency is about using minimum cpu cycles or minimum memory or minimum network round trip or more generically using minimum/optimum resources to get something done.
Scalability is about minimizing bottlenecks and linear scaling so one can just copy and execute by adding more nodes/resources and expect correctness and increased throughput.
Both of these have nothing to do with domain expertise.
Scalability stems from domain knowledge.
Sometimes you need two orders of magnitude. Sometimes you need five. Sometimes you need less than one.