Google and Python

[Bryan Olson]

TheFlyingDutchman asked of someone:
> Would you know what technique the custom web server uses
> to invoke a C++ app 

No, I expect he would not know that. I can tell you
that GWS is just for Google, and anyone else is almost
certainly better off with Apache.

> (ditto for Java and Python) CGI is supposed to be too slow
> for large sites.

Sort of. The more queries a site answers, the more benefit
to reducing the per-request overhead. But if one thinks
Google could not afford so much machine time:

     On average, a single query on Google reads hundreds of
     megabytes of data and consumes tens of billions of CPU
     cycles.
     http://labs.google.com/papers/googlecluster.html

Another quote from that paper:

     We also produce all our software in-house [...]

There's a saying in the Navy that there are three ways to
do anything: the right way, the wrong way, and the Navy
way.  How does GWS invoke a Java app? The Google way.

How does Google use Python? As their scripting-language
of choice. A fine choice, but just a tiny little piece.

Maybe Alex will disagree with me. In my short time at
Google, I was uber-nobody.

-- 
--Bryan