Is There Pie in the Cloud?
It’s so wonderful that Pinterest has free tech talks. The most recent engineering talk that I attended was about about cloud engineering. I always meet interesting people at these tech talks, enjoy the speakers, and the icing on the cake is the free food.
Irony alert: this time there was no cake. Or pie! Which to all God-fearing clowns is dessert. By the way, if you need to hear more about clowns, here’s an article any pie-loving clown would like: Secrets of the Social Media Circus.
So no cake, no pie, and no dessert of any kind? Well, I’ll just have to make do!*
Easy as pie?
Easy as pie?
First up for her tech talk was Nori Heikkinen , a Google engineer, who spoke briefly about the history of search and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and a stint at Healthcare.gov. She did not make her time with Healthcare.gov sound as easy as pie. And speaking of pie, my favorite kind is blackberry. But since it’s November, there is mostly pumpkin and apple pie.
Since I wasn’t allowed to take pictures, here’s an image of some blackbirds instead. This picture is not meant to resemble any living cloud engineers.
Four and Twenty Blackbirds
Four and Twenty Blackbirds
Another Highlight was Jeremy Carroll who reassured us that the pins we pinners pin are copied in triplicate so we can rest assured that they won’t disappear like hot pies left on the windowsill spotted by famished blackbirds (not his exact words). And did you ever stop to think about how many things have to happen after a pin is pinned? Someone has to make the list of other things you might like related to that first pin. Whew. Thinking about it might make you need a piece of pie. By the way, this Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book sounds heavenly, doesn’t it? But I digress.
Pie Before E, Except After C
Pie before E Except After C
Raj Patel, head of cloud engineering at Pinterest, made one of the best points of all in his talk: A Pin Lives Forever. He discussed the half life of other social media posts, emphasizing that pins live on and on and can be rediscovered days, weeks, or months after they’re pinned.
You can’t spell Pinterest without PIE
You can’t spell Pinterest without PIE
Not to rub it in, but Pinterest without the PIE would just be ntrst! Which doesn’t sound very delicious. If you’d like to read about another Pinterest tech talk, here’s my Discover Pinterest: Behind the Scenes.
*I am in no way intending to malign Pinterest: just thought I’d offer them some pie for thought.
Interesting stuff. One piece of pie I’ll leave you with – posts on EVERY site live forever. Post it and it will be found. It’s why you never post anything you wouldn’t want grandma to see – EVER!
The reason this effect is more profound on Pinterest has less to do with how Pinterest has been engineered compared to their counterparts but how the site is used. As a search engine, relevance, more than time affects what gets shown to the viewer.
Thank you, Robert.
Yes, the discovery aspect of Pinterest lets older pins rise to the surface more easily than the chronological order of tweets, for instance. And that’s a good tip about not posting anything your grandma wouldn’t like to see!
Carol
Pie before E! I’m dying Carol, your pun game is strong in this one.
“Pinterest without the PIE would just be ntrst!”
No, not very delicious at all.
This is amazing LOL.
Thank you, Adam! There are lots of puns available under the big top!
Carol