Why Did So Many Startups Choose MongoDB?
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Re: Why Did So Many Startups Choose MongoDB?
#2This post makes the assumption that MongoDB isn't doing well based on Hacker News. MongoDB the company, and product, are doing extremely well (outside of anecdotal Hacker News posts), based on objective metrics like downloads, skills, jobs, and company revenue (and the company is nearing 900 employees on linkedin).
To put it another way, RethinkDB did extremely well on Hacker News. Twitter didn't, if you remember all the negative posts (and still went public). There is little relation between success on Hacker News and company success.
Re: Why Did So Many Startups Choose MongoDB?
#3The misplaced hype cycle is real.
10gen is not a company dedicated to databases, at least not if the initial code quality of MongoDB is a signal (and it should be, since if you know a thing or two about storage you wouldn't take the compromises it initially did)
Unfortunately, many fresh graduates with no experience in storage decided to evaluate the technology based on its very visible merits, without considering that scalability is not really a top priority even in companies that have to "scale", and that reliability trumps every other metric.
Mongo has failed spectacularly in being a reliable data store, and its scalability is mediocre, given that it's a lot more about query planning, analytics and optimization than having out-of-the-box sharding.
This is one of those areas having some seniority does wonders. Storage concepts are not easy to grasp, and evaluating a database's reliability takes much longer than most product cycles.
Re: Why Did So Many Startups Choose MongoDB?
#4This post makes the assumption that MongoDB isn't doing well based on Hacker News. MongoDB the company, and product, are doing extremely well (outside of anecdotal Hacker News posts), based on objective metrics like downloads, skills, jobs, and company revenue (and the company is nearing 900 employees on linkedin). To put it another way, RethinkDB did extremely well on Hacker News. Twitter didn't, if you remember all…
Can't speak to current popularity, but I think the overall critique is spot on. It became really popular riding a combination of up-front friendliness and the No-SQL hype bubble. The next morning, a lot of folks started feeling the hangover, whether from actual problems with Mongo or a realization that they did, in fact, need a relational DB.
To be clear, I've only ever run it as support for something else that depended on it. It just isn't well-suited to my projects and it wasn't interesting enough to invest much more than noodling a bit with it. I'm sure it is a fine product that turned in to a victim of its own hype.
It does serve as a decent example for the next generation of developers about how flavor-of-the-month trends in tech make people do stupid things, like decide they don't actually need ACID for handling money.
Re: Why Did So Many Startups Choose MongoDB?
#5I'm not a back-end dev strictly. I played with mongo on some side projects back when it was all hyped up. One thing that appealed to me was the on-boarding process for a non "database guy". I got lots of small side projects up and running very quickly and the concepts made sense. Similar to jQuery being easy to understand and popular to newcomers but you later learn it isn't always the best tool for the job.
Re: Why Did So Many Startups Choose MongoDB?
#6This post makes the assumption that MongoDB isn't doing well based on Hacker News. MongoDB the company, and product, are doing extremely well (outside of anecdotal Hacker News posts), based on objective metrics like downloads, skills, jobs, and company revenue (and the company is nearing 900 employees on linkedin). To put it another way, RethinkDB did extremely well on Hacker News. Twitter didn't, if you remember all…
MongoDB is like the PHP of databases. I started programming PHP and currently I bash it every time I can, because it is a terrible language. But it is easy to start and do cool stuff, just like mongodb. Initial traction is more important than initial architecture, I guess.
Re: Why Did So Many Startups Choose MongoDB?
#7The misplaced hype cycle is real. 10gen is not a company dedicated to databases, at least not if the initial code quality of MongoDB is a signal (and it should be, since if you know a thing or two about storage you wouldn't take the compromises it initially did) Unfortunately, many fresh graduates with no experience in storage decided to evaluate the technology based on its very visible merits, without considering th…
Why wouldn't you always use something that is tried-and-true? MongoDB is relatively new compared to something like postgresql or even mysql.
Re: Why Did So Many Startups Choose MongoDB?
#8This post makes the assumption that MongoDB isn't doing well based on Hacker News. MongoDB the company, and product, are doing extremely well (outside of anecdotal Hacker News posts), based on objective metrics like downloads, skills, jobs, and company revenue (and the company is nearing 900 employees on linkedin). To put it another way, RethinkDB did extremely well on Hacker News. Twitter didn't, if you remember all…
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Re: Why Did So Many Startups Choose MongoDB?
#9This post makes the assumption that MongoDB isn't doing well based on Hacker News. MongoDB the company, and product, are doing extremely well (outside of anecdotal Hacker News posts), based on objective metrics like downloads, skills, jobs, and company revenue (and the company is nearing 900 employees on linkedin). To put it another way, RethinkDB did extremely well on Hacker News. Twitter didn't, if you remember all…
MongoDB is like the PHP of databases. I started programming PHP and currently I bash it every time I can, because it is a terrible language. But it is easy to start and do cool stuff, just like mongodb. Initial traction is more important than initial architecture, I guess.
Why is PHP a terrible language? It powers a vast part of the internet including sites huge, tiny, and everything in between.
It's in vogue to hate on PHP especially here on HN. Language hate based on some sort of popularity contest is silly and language snobbery wont be tolerated at any company worth its salt (read: NOT most startups)
Re: Why Did So Many Startups Choose MongoDB?
#10Knowledge does not equal wisdom. Perhaps it was young folks with lots of knowledge didn't see the wisdom in using battle-hardened, boring technology.