Your $5 Pentium 3 server isn't the largest retail website on the internet making $61 billion a year.
Having seen a lot of the code that Amazon runs on, and having seen first-hand the scale that it runs on, I'll say this: it's not perfect, but it's remarkably well-engineered, and a hell of a lot better than most snarky HNers could do.
Having seen a lot of the code that Amazon runs on, and having seen first-hand the scale that it runs on, I'll say this: it's not perfect, but it's remarkably well-engineered, and a hell of a lot better than most snarky HNers could do.