The launch of the healthcare.gov site has shined an interrogation style spotlight on the often over-looked world of Mountain Dew, Corn Chips, and Snicker bars, the world of web development. As a basic PHP developer myself I feel like my brothers at keyboard are being unfairly crucified for mistakes that are sadly industry standard!
On the first days of the failed site Obamacare proponents were pushing a story of site overload. Similar to when Oprah shares the girl next door’s blog entry on her website, the girl next door’s blog crashes. Why? Volume. A webserver can only handle so much traffic, and when it reaches capacity it gets gridlocked just like the Red Mountain Expressway in 5:00 traffic. No one goes anywhere.