Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust • Hacker News Board

Re: Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust

#141

Post by efxhoy » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 10:46 PM UTC

lispisok wrote: post #127

efxhoy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran into issues with TS too. Main issue I recall now was maintaining a grand total count of events that were already rolled up into daily counts was not fast since it always looked back at all the data. There was no way in the ts patterns to efficiently express it without handrolling something. The issue was that a grand total count can’t be expressed in terms of a hypertable because there’s no time column. It’s fa…

You tried to use a timeseries database without a time column?

> Don't be snarky.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Are you expecting a real answer of how I was hoping timescale's internal watermark system would help me roll up a total count or are you just implying I'm an idiot?

Re: Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust

#142

Post by mardifoufs » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 11:03 PM UTC

efxhoy wrote: post #141

lispisok wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You tried to use a timeseries database without a time column?

> Don't be snarky. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Are you expecting a real answer of how I was hoping timescale's internal watermark system would help me roll up a total count or are you just implying I'm an idiot?

What's the difference between the watermark and a time column? Not the person you were replying to but I'm curious since I also thought that TimeseriesDB had a similar "timestamp" to influx.

Re: Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust

#143

Post by mardifoufs » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 11:06 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #118

mardifoufs wrote: post #7

I love influx but damn do they like moving (too?) fast and quickly changing stuff. In a way, it's pretty cool since it means that they don't get stuck with bad decisions for backwards compatibility reasons, but it's a bit of a roller coaster for users. Not sure what's the best solution though. Having a "stable" but fundamentally limited product (I guess influxdb v1) or breaking stuff in hopes of ending up with a way…

Why would you find that cool? It's anything but unless it is a personal project. If people depend on your work, that is irresponsible.

I guess I'd rather have that than ossifying on a completely flawed architecture. Apparently flux was kind of a dead end, and while it's super risky and illustrates issues in decision making, it's still better than just doubling down on something that their own team consider to be futureless or too flawed.

Re: Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust

#144

Post by efxhoy » Sun, Oct 01, 2023, 11:30 PM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #142

efxhoy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't be snarky. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Are you expecting a real answer of how I was hoping timescale's internal watermark system would help me roll up a total count or are you just implying I'm an idiot?

What's the difference between the watermark and a time column? Not the person you were replying to but I'm curious since I also thought that TimeseriesDB had a similar "timestamp" to influx.

TS requires you to specify a time column in each hypertable or view (continuous aggregate) where you want it to work its magic. It then stores an internal watermark that it compares to the time column in the table to figure out from where to read when refreshing.

My issue was that for a grand total I didn’t have a time column, so I couldn’t define my query as a continuous aggregate and the query had to start counting from the start of my underlying series each time.

Re: Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust

#145

Post by manicennui » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 12:35 AM UTC

hagen1778 wrote: post #131

manicennui wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd find that Prometheus is way behind a number of solutions in the corporate world, including Graphite, DogStatsD, etc. Popularity on HN does not translate to real world popularity.

That's only a matter of time when they hire younger engineers who are familiar with modern monitoring systems and eager to apply their knowledge in practice.

What is it that you think prometheus offers over other solutions? It is more likely that the younger engineer is going to learn that companies don't care about what is popular on HN.

Re: Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust

#146

Post by hu3 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 1:46 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #105

pauldix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still love Go, but I think Rust is a better fit for very performance sensitive systems software like a database.

You can write a database in Go, sure, but if you want to compete at the very top end, you need all the control. Go is nice in the way that Go is nice (if you even agree with that statement) precisely because it doesn't have that control. Unless it is a terminal goal for a database to be in Go simply to be in Go (BoltDB seems to fit into this category) or you don't care to compete at the very top end, I think it's a m…

Not sure I follow since there are very competitive tools written in Go such as https://victoriametrics.com for an example in this space.

Re: Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust

#147

Post by n8henrie » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 1:52 AM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #50

This was discussed on HN at the time (2020): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049253 At some point HN is going to have to decide if it's the Rust subreddit or a news site.

I started using HN because I'm a rust fanboy and there was a lot of rust content (same with lobsters). I'm glad to say there is a lot of other HN content that interests me, I might never have known.

Funny enough, in contrast to when I joined, the pendulum seems to have swung, and comments disparaging rust seem to be en vogue.

Re: Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust

#148

Post by Zuiii » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:17 AM UTC

We're in the process of doing the opposite. Wish we had chosen the right tool for the job from day one.

Re: Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust

#149

Post by Too » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 5:35 AM UTC

lakomen wrote: post #13

vb-8448 wrote: post #3

Can someone explain what's the InfluxData's market? Or how they make/plan to make money? If we speak about metrics, Prometheus just win.

Influx is a wholesome solution where Prometheus is just the time series database

Can you expand what you are missing?

Prometheus is not just the db itself, it’s the ecosystem around it. You’ve got service-discovery, alertmanager and basically every application in existence having a /metrics endpoint and some pre-made Grafana dashboard.

Re: Influxdb made the switch from Go to Rust

#150

Post by zozbot234 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 6:35 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #105

pauldix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still love Go, but I think Rust is a better fit for very performance sensitive systems software like a database.

You can write a database in Go, sure, but if you want to compete at the very top end, you need all the control. Go is nice in the way that Go is nice (if you even agree with that statement) precisely because it doesn't have that control. Unless it is a terminal goal for a database to be in Go simply to be in Go (BoltDB seems to fit into this category) or you don't care to compete at the very top end, I think it's a m…

Most "we started in Go" projects are a lot older than Rust itself. Rust 1.0 was only released in 2015, and the language only really became usable with the 2018 edition. C++ is not really a comparable language, it's not even memory safe.