Release It Book Club Chapter 3: Impulse and Stress

Chapter 3 of Release It! has some interesting definitions that I hadn’t considered as deeply before. Nygard notes that the following two terms come from mechanical engineering.

Impulse is a “rapid shock to the system.”

Stress is “a force applied to the system over an extended period.”

What do you think of these terms? Have you felt the need to differentiate between these two types of load in your work?

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In my own work, I think I generally summarize the issue and the type of load is implied. For example, “When these jobs are all scheduled at 12pm it causes the load to spike and the database can’t handle it.” I suppose that would be an impulse; it may be handy to use this term in the future. “The jobs scheduled at 12pm are an impulse that the database cannot handle.”