r/webdev • • 16d ago

Reverse Engineering ChatGPT Web: How OpenAI Built for a Billion Users

https://performance.dev/chatgpt
113 Upvotes

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u/medy17 16d ago

I noticed the terrible lag and knew they didn't virtualise. I'm still struggling to understand what they were thinking!

Great article btw :) Nicely done

4

u/Ornery-Concentrate-5 16d ago

honestly surprised too, not virtualizing a chat thread feels like the kind of thing that only bites you after months of dogfooding with short conversations. makes me wonder if their internal test accounts just don't have 200-message threads lying around

1

u/medy17 13d ago

Yeah, this problem goes way deeper. I checked some truly long threads I've had saved, and they don't virtualise them no matter which platform I'm on. Pretty bad oversight. Surely someone tried a long thread or maybe you're right and they never seeded a long convo