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Dolt is Git for data

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Re: Dolt is Git for data

#111

Post by dan00 »

peteforde wrote: post #88
drewmol wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider your effort a mistake looking back? Were you able to pay yourself fairly or was it a losing investment?

The answer to that can only be nuanced. On one hand, startups are as exciting as bank heists. You put together an amazing team, do your homework as best you can, then get killed trying to execute your perfect plan. I'm proud of what we built and we all learned a lot the hard way. On the down-side, building a company is emotionally, physically, mentally exhausting. It wasn't really a matter of whether I could pay myse…

> Ultimately, I don't exactly regret it but I certainly wish that we weren't so convincing that we convinced ourselves of a market opportunity that we couldn't access or didn't exist at all.

How should you really know this without trying? If you aren't convinced, where should the motivation come from?

Re: Dolt is Git for data

#112

Post by teraku »

I think they could find funding and use-cases, if they had something like lincensing and terms of use backed into data to track lineage. E.g. "this columns contains emails" and is revokable. Or when you publish data, "this column needs hashing/anonymizing/...". And if you track data across versions and can version relations, you can create lineage.

Overall seen many of these lately, waiting for one to really shine. But not because I think it's a grand problem, as I can version my DDL/DML even/code, but I see some need for it because I have a lot of non-tech people working with data throwing it left and right and expecting me to clean up after them.

Re: Dolt is Git for data

#113

Post by bryanrasmussen »

TylerE wrote: post #99
sdan wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it succeeded (at least more recently) because of the UX that companies like Github and Gitlab gave, not particularly linus or because it was free.

If Linus hasn’t pushed it, it never would have caught on.

Sure lots of good things would never catch on except an influential person in the field the good thing targets says: hey this is really useful for us!

This gets lots of people to look at it. But those people still have to decide in the end of the day whether it is actually useful for them.

Re: Dolt is Git for data

#114

Post by roystonvassey »

peteforde wrote: post #36

Only 39 days since the last "GitHub for data" was announced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22375774 I'll say what I said in February: I started a company with the same premise 9 years ago, during the prime "big data" hype cycle. We burned through a lot of investor money only to realize that there was not a market opportunity to capture. That is, many people thought it was cool - we even did co-sponsored data c…

In our group we use git for code repos and cloud for storage and actual compute. It works seamlessly and git APIs work fantastically with almost any service, IDE or whatever your tool of choice.

I suspect with the increasing cloud adaption, accessing data is getting easier by the day and I see no real need for a “git for data” tool. Plus, as a data scientist, it allows me to keep code and data separate, especially if I’m working with confidential data.

Re: Dolt is Git for data

#115

Post by sdan »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #113
TylerE wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Linus hasn’t pushed it, it never would have caught on.

Sure lots of good things would never catch on except an influential person in the field the good thing targets says: hey this is really useful for us! This gets lots of people to look at it. But those people still have to decide in the end of the day whether it is actually useful for them.

Reminds me of sports:

Just because Steph Curry uses Under Armor doesn't mean everyone will too.

I think obviously something created by Linus was deemed to be of great value, but what made Git as profound as it is today is: UX for the majority of people who are beginners, which was Github backed by millions of other developers.

Re: Dolt is Git for data

#116

Post by lifty »

aboodman wrote: post #100
chrismorgan wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also noms, which I had high hopes for three years ago, but it seems dead these days (Salesforce acquired their company, and that was that): https://github.com/attic-labs/noms (Judging by other comments in this thread, Dolt may be a descendant, partially or completely, of Noms?)

Yep, dolt is a fork of noms: https://github.com/liquidata-inc/dolt#credits-and-license (and sorry :( -- yay open source?)

I can't tell you how happy I was when I discovered noms several days ago, and then the subsequent disappointment that it is not developed anymore. Anyway, now that it's in the open maybe someone with the technical chops to develop such a thing will continue development. Here's to hoping! And good luck in your new endeavour, which also looks like a very cool project.

Re: Dolt is Git for data

#117

Post by aboodman »

lifty wrote: post #116
aboodman wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, dolt is a fork of noms: https://github.com/liquidata-inc/dolt#credits-and-license (and sorry :( -- yay open source?)

I can't tell you how happy I was when I discovered noms several days ago, and then the subsequent disappointment that it is not developed anymore. Anyway, now that it's in the open maybe someone with the technical chops to develop such a thing will continue development. Here's to hoping! And good luck in your new endeavour, which also looks like a very cool project.

Thank you! For the record, Replicache uses Noms internally, so I think ... something ... will still become of Noms. We're just not sure how to move forward with it at this point.

And I personally find Noms incredibly satisfying mental model to work with, so I hope that eventually some others will too.

Re: Dolt is Git for data

#119

Post by GordonS »

samatman wrote: post #63

> Dolt is the only database with branches There's also litetree, whose slogan is simply "SQLite with branches": https://github.com/aergoio/litetree

Wow, litetree looks amazing!

Unfortunately it looks like merging is still under development, and encryption doesn't appear to supported either. Definitely one for me to watch though.

Re: Dolt is Git for data

#120

Post by austinjp »

sjtindell wrote: post #43
peteforde wrote: post #36

Only 39 days since the last "GitHub for data" was announced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22375774 I'll say what I said in February: I started a company with the same premise 9 years ago, during the prime "big data" hype cycle. We burned through a lot of investor money only to realize that there was not a market opportunity to capture. That is, many people thought it was cool - we even did co-sponsored data c…

Just want to say, really appreciate this food for thought. Where do you go and see someone say "my company tried it and...". This site is a godsend.

Agreed, it's always refreshing to read candid posts like this. A useful term for Google is "startup post mortem" although you still have to do plenty of sifting.
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