“why is I/O in docker slow, and how would you improve it” is pretty esoteric knowledge now, but would have been considered basic knowledge (for other applications, not specifically just docker) only 12 years ago.

I have had people working who don’t in the slightest understand how a filesystem works, so taking it a step further is impossible.

When I tune things I am asked how I know, but everything is just built from the basics, and the basics don’t make you feel productive, so they’re always skipped when possible.

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SchemaLoad 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

12 years ago I certainly did not know why a servers IO would be slow, short of just the physical storage was slow. I think you might just be overestimating how much stuff people knew rather than the whole population forgetting how filesystem and IO internals work.

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dijit 5 days ago | parent [-]

you hadn’t heard of RAID, readahead, write-back/write-through, stride or even just the concept of fragmentation?

Even if you didn’t, I doubt you didn’t have someone on staff who did know about these things and would help out randomly with troubleshooting and avoiding footguns.

	▲	SchemaLoad 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The people who knew about those things back then know modern infrastructure today. I'm sure if you asked the average web dev 12 years ago what write-back io is they wouldn't have any idea. Perhaps the only trend is more companies not hiring anyone who specialises in infrastructure and just leaving it as a side task for React devs to look at once every few months.
	▲	oceansky 4 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I knew about RAID and fragmentation, but I haven't had to work with it since I went from tech support to backend, it just never came up so it's easy to forget.
	▲	flexagoon 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		https://xkcd.com/2501/

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PunchyHamster 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> “why is I/O in docker slow, and how would you improve it” is pretty esoteric knowledge now, but would have been considered basic knowledge (for other applications, not specifically just docker) only 12 years ago.

you could've used docker for 12 years and never hit it if you used it on Linux, and followed sensible practices (mount the data dir from outside so it can be reattached to upgraded version of the container)

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inetknght 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I have had people working who don’t in the slightest understand how a filesystem works, so taking it a step further is impossible.

It's as if computer science, in terms of data structures and algorithms, isn't taught. Or, perhaps, isn't taught as being relevant.

As for lack of knowledge about filesystems: it might be contributed by mobile devices hiding real filesystems from users.

> the basics don’t make you feel productive, so they’re always skipped when possible.

Basics do make me feel productive. However, it seems bosses and businesses don't agree.

I fear the day basics can be automated away.

	▲	gremlinunderway 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		and in fairness to the mobile devices thing of abstracting file systems, when it comes to discoverability and organizing files or documents, a rigid hierarchy of nested sub-folders is far inferior to a single directory with tagging or other metadata properties you can use to filter and essentially build custom directories on the fly with.

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re-thc 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> “why is I/O in docker slow, and how would you improve it” is pretty esoteric knowledge now, but would have been considered basic knowledge only 12 years ago.

Yes and no. The world has also changed all these years. Why something is slow 10+ years ago might not be today or at least for the same reason. E.g. Docker on Mac especially with Apple silicon has undergone major changes the last few years.

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okibry 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe in today, it has too many wrapper layer so the basic become deeper.