2019-02-26 21:08 UTC

Fun MySQL fact of the day: sync_binlog is a counter

The D in ACID stands for Durability, which is the property that guarantees a committed transaction will be permanently recorded. Perfect durability is impossible, but MySQL allows us to improve our ability to offer this guarantee this through the sync_binlog flag. ... read more

2016-05-23 00:44 UTC

An In-Memory CSS Compressor For django-pipeline

I recently discovered the convenience of the django-pipeline library when attempting to reduce the asset size of a Django project. Currently, this library only seems to support external CSS compressors, such as Yuglify and YUI. While I have no objection to these specific tools, I simply do not want to ... read more

2016-03-28 03:32 UTC

Freeing MappedByteBuffer

While investigating a production bug that indicated that the operating system of a server running only a JVM continually ran out of memory under a specific set of circumstances, I discovered a very interesting idiosyncrasy of the JVM. Specifically, memory allocated with mmap through the MappedByteBuffer (the super class of ... read more

2016-02-21 19:37 UTC

The Cost Of Consistency: When 9ms Is 1s Too Much

The CAP theorem remains one of the most important tools in my software developer's toolbelt. Used correctly, it can help create services and products that can offer an excellent user experience and protect revenue during partial failures. Used incorrectly, it can lead to a poor user experience and loss of ... read more

2016-02-07 23:24 UTC

Pessimistic Optimism: The Case Of Unexpected Deadlocks

Despite the fact I've been developing software in one way or another for almost 20 years, I'm constantly surprised how things work, and, once the frustration wears off, I'm intrigued when things break. Lucky for me, over the last few weeks, I've been surprised, frustrated, and intrigued by what, on ... read more

2014-01-11 15:48 UTC

Perceiving The Effects Of Cache Coherency In Spin Locks

The "test-and-test-and-set" algorithm is a fairly well-understood solution to reducing latency in spin locks. In particular, the algorithm is often employed to reduce the latency exhibited in the similar "test-and-set" algorithm. Understanding how and why a seeming-superfluous read results in lower latency is rather interesting. ... read more

2013-03-18 00:53 UTC

The Concurrency Of ConcurrentHashMap

Java's ConcurrentHashMap is an excellent point of study when learning about Java's Memory Model. It employs numerous techniques to provide lock-free reads while still guaranteeing safe publication of objects. This article represents my attempt to take the magic out of the ConcurrentHashMap implementation. ... read more

2013-01-22 02:54 UTC

Escape Analysis & Stack Allocated Objects

In 1999, a paper, Escape Analysis For Java was to appear in the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages, and Applications. This paper outlined an algorithm to detect whether an object, O, escaped from the currently executed method, M, or current thread, T. This paper ... read more