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CockroachDB 1.0

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#191

Post by btilly »

SilasX wrote: post #168
newsat13 wrote: post #160

Very disappointed with HN turning into a 4chan/reddit style trolling board about the name. Guys, we get it that you don't like the name. Can we please stop bike shedding and move on? The people at cockroachdb have obviously seen all your messages but decided it's worth keeping the name. What more is there to talk about? Why not talk about the relative technical merits of this DB?

It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Most people -- i.e. in procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to -- don't want anything to do with cockroaches. The idea disgusts them at a gut level, not something you can talk away. HN users are giving vital advice, for free. Those who ignore it will have only themselves to blame. As I say every…

"CockroachDB..your data will survive."

It is both a negative reaction and is memorable. It is not clear which wins, and it isn't your job to decide. Yes, you have an opinion but you may not be right.

I remember in the mid-2000s thinking that a particular politician couldn't possibly succeed with a Muslim sounding name. Turns out that a lot of people thought that. Yet Barack Hussein Obama managed to become President.

Your opinion has definitely been registered. Continuing to state it has no value.

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#192

Post by robbiemitchell »

SilasX wrote: post #168
newsat13 wrote: post #160

Very disappointed with HN turning into a 4chan/reddit style trolling board about the name. Guys, we get it that you don't like the name. Can we please stop bike shedding and move on? The people at cockroachdb have obviously seen all your messages but decided it's worth keeping the name. What more is there to talk about? Why not talk about the relative technical merits of this DB?

It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Most people -- i.e. in procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to -- don't want anything to do with cockroaches. The idea disgusts them at a gut level, not something you can talk away. HN users are giving vital advice, for free. Those who ignore it will have only themselves to blame. As I say every…

> It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color

Still seems like bikeshedding.

It's not your company. You're (probably) not an equity holder. Have you personally been harmed by the name because your company wouldn't let you adopt it in spite of its technical merits? Are you worried it won't succeed because of the name and thus are fighting on the company's behalf for its survival?

> Most people ... and others you need to appeal to ... don't want anything to do with cockroaches

You're making so much of this up out of thin air.

> giving vital advice, for free

> As I say every time this comes up

As the parent said, the staff have already seen these messages. They have decided to keep the name. Advice is helpful, but once the decision is made, it's not. Let it go.

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#193

Post by petre »

jordanlewis wrote: post #164
daliwali wrote: post #156

CockroachDB looks like a great alternative to PostgreSQL, congrats to the team for doing so much in such a short time. The wire protocol is compatible with Postgres, which allows re-using battle-tested Postgres clients. However it's a non-starter for my use case since it lacks array columns, which Postgres supports [0]. I also make use of fairly recent SQL features introduced in Postgres 9.4, but I'm not sure if ther…

I'm an engineer on the SQL team at CockroachDB. We're very aware of our missing support for array column types - and in fact beginning to add support for arrays is one of my team's priorities for the next release cycle. What kind of other recent SQL features introduced in Postgres 9.4 do you use? Postgres has a ton of features, as I'm sure you're aware, and while we strive for wire compatibility with Postgres it's no…

JSON/JSONB datatypes, listen/notify, spatial extensions.

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#194

Post by SilasX »

genkaos wrote: post #186
SilasX wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Most people -- i.e. in procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to -- don't want anything to do with cockroaches. The idea disgusts them at a gut level, not something you can talk away. HN users are giving vital advice, for free. Those who ignore it will have only themselves to blame. As I say every…

Mongo is a derogatory term in spanish. But hey! not english so no problem.

"Deragatory" isn't the problem; the issue is whether it invokes visceral feelings of disgust. Many terms can be used as an insult, but are still tolerable as a name because a) they have non-insulting usages, and b) the emotional response does not rise to the level of "visceral disgust".

The Spanish Wikipedia suggests many usages of the term "mongo", which probably wouldn't persist if the term was so repulsive: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongo

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#195

Post by hinkley »

socmag wrote: post #78
irfansharif wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might find our post[1] on atomic clocks, rather having to do without them, partially interesting. [1]: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/living-without-atomic-clo...

Hey guys, I'm a fellow developer of distributed systems here. First of all I think what you are doing is great. My question is what's the point of clocks at all? The current time is a very subjective matter and I'm sure you know this, the only real time is at the point when the cluster receives the request to commit. Anything else should be considered hearsay. Specifically the time source of any client is totally mea…

When a single system is receiving messages, you pick an observed order of events that meets some definition of fairness, and you stick with it all the way through a transaction. By pretending A happens before B (even if you're not entirely sure) you can return a self-consistent result. And once you have that you can simplify a lot of engineering and make a lot of optimizations, so that the requests aren't just reliable but also timely.

You throw three more observers in and how do you make sure that all of them observe the requests arriving in the same order? Not even the hardware can guarantee that packets arrive at 4 places in the same order, even if the hardware is arranged in a symmetrical fashion (which takes half the fun out of a clustered solution).

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#196

Post by dang »

nocman wrote: post #106
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're thinking of somewhere else. The up/down votes are a way of agreeing or disagreeing without cluttering up the comments with a bunch of "me toos" or "nuhuhhs"

I'm certain that I'm not thinking of somewhere else. I'm completely open to the possibility that I just remember it wrong, but I'm sure that it was HN that I was thinking of, and not another site.

There's never been such a policy on HN; you remembered it wrong, as have many before you. It's the same phenomenon as attributes pithy quotes to Einstein and makes Canadians think we have Miranda rights: people hang memories on the nearest pre-existing hook in the brain.

Probably the most that I've written about downvotes on HN is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9440694.

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#197

Post by genkaos »

SilasX wrote: post #194
genkaos wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mongo is a derogatory term in spanish. But hey! not english so no problem.

"Deragatory" isn't the problem; the issue is whether it invokes visceral feelings of disgust. Many terms can be used as an insult, but are still tolerable as a name because a) they have non-insulting usages, and b) the emotional response does not rise to the level of "visceral disgust". The Spanish Wikipedia suggests many usages of the term "mongo", which probably wouldn't persist if the term was so repulsive: https:…

I'm a spaniard and mongo is an insult. [removed unnecessary snarky comment]

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#198

Post by BenjiWiebe »

beamatronic wrote: post #167
bogomipz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with all your points. That being said MongoDB, Aerospike and Hadoop have all gotten good traction even with their slightly silly names.

To me, cockroaches are such an unbelievably negative association that I don't think I could get over the name and work with this product, because I wouldn't want to be saying cockroach all the time. Same thing if your database was called BedBug.

To me, cockroaches aren't disgusting. And yes, I have used an outhouse in a 3rd world country where cockroaches were swarming up and out... But they just don't disgust me.

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#200

Post by networked »

SilasX wrote: post #168
newsat13 wrote: post #160

Very disappointed with HN turning into a 4chan/reddit style trolling board about the name. Guys, we get it that you don't like the name. Can we please stop bike shedding and move on? The people at cockroachdb have obviously seen all your messages but decided it's worth keeping the name. What more is there to talk about? Why not talk about the relative technical merits of this DB?

It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Most people -- i.e. in procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to -- don't want anything to do with cockroaches. The idea disgusts them at a gut level, not something you can talk away. HN users are giving vital advice, for free. Those who ignore it will have only themselves to blame. As I say every…

On the other hand, if I heard of a database called "CockroachDB" gaining ever-greater adoption, I'd pay close attention to it because it was clearly succeeding despite a marketing handicap.
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