--- /dev/null
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+
+<h2>But what's wrong with Twitter?</h2>
+
+<p>I'M GLAD YOU ASKED. There are two aspects of Twitter that just bug
+me as an engineer:</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li><strong>Ruby on Rails</strong> - Using rails to prototype a system is
+fine — scaling up to a million hits a day with it is just a bad
+idea. As the service grew, I'm sure it cost them a lot more time than
+it saved.</li>
+<li><strong>140 characters is not enough</strong> - I routinely write
+sentences longer than 140 characters, so I can't even begin to imagine
+making a point in such a small space. This textual confinement has
+led to the rise of URL shorteners, which are <a
+href="http://bytex64.net/blog/e2256">breaking the internet</a>.
+</ol>
+
+<p>Blërg solves these problems by applying absurd reactionary
+engineering. Blërg's database backend is a custom C program that
+handles requests over HTTP and stores data in a very small and
+efficient indexed log-structured database. The frontend is done
+entirely in client-side Javascript. A single post can be up to 65535
+bytes in length.</p>
+
+<p>Which is not to say that I believe writing your service in C is the
+solution to all your problems. Clearly, this approach has just as
+many hairy problems that will bite you in the ass sooner or later.
+The best way, as with most things, lies somewhere in the middle of
+high-level abstraction and ZOMGHARDCORE OPTIMIZATION.</p>
+
+<h2>Is this a joke?</h2>
+
+<p>Yes. No. Maybe. Blërg is an exercise in constructive satire — a
+fully functional service created in a fit of hubris to poke fun at Twitter's
+engineering. It's just for fun, but no one is going to keep you from using
+it seriously. :]</p>
+
+<h2>Tell me more about this database engine.</h2>
+
+<p>Here, take a look at the <a href="/doc/#design">design docs</a>.</p>
+
+<h2>I'm a social media whore and I want to share links!</h2>
+
+<p>I've created a bookmarklet just for you: <a href="javascript:location.href='http://blerg.dominionofawesome.com/?post/'+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+'/'+encodeURIComponent(location.href)">Blërg it!</a></p>
projects / blerg.git / blobdiff