A few years ago, one of the websites I was working on went on the front page of Google (yes, that small blue link). The traffic it gets is pretty high.
I had to develop search functionality. The first thing you’d think is to use the database you are currently using or maybe use a special one, like elastic.
But in this case, I needed to use the database as little as possible to be able to cope with the load.
So I decided to go the simplest way: create an index with an in-memory array where all the words would be stored. I ran a linear search, yes, a simple for loop with the search logic.
Was it the best index structure? No, if you just think about performance, but it worked, it was simple, easy to maintain and change.
There is always time to make it more advanced. With time you end up loving simple and flat arrays.
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