Let's Welcome our Neo-Feudal Overlords

This is an excerpt from my article Building Super Scalable Systems: Blade Runner Meets Autonomic Computing in the Ambient Cloud.

There's a pattern, already begun, that has accelerated by the need for applications to scale and increase complexity, the end result of which will be that applications give up their independence and enter a kind of feudal relationship with their platform provider.

To understand how this process works, like a glacier slowly and inevitably carving out a deep river valley, here's the type of question I get quite a lot:

I've learned PHP and MySQL and I've built a web app that I HOPE will receive traffic comparable to eBay's with a similar database structure. I see all these different opinions and different techniques and languages being recommended and it's so confusing. All I want is perhaps one book or one website that focuses on PHP and MySQL and building a large database web app like eBay's. Does something like this exist?

I'm always at a loss for words with these questions. What can I possibly say?

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  Read more...   Source: High Scalability