251–260 of 457 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience RethinkDB "just works" and Mongo didn't.
MongoDB has served me well but HN almost convinced me to change even if I haven't had any problems. I'll never listen to you guys again because if I did I would be stuck with a scrapped database.
A shame that a company like mongo can exist while a company like rethink folds.
I believe this is because the Node.JS community still recommends MongoDB as the perfect database engine for their projects. There is even a name for their stack — MEAN, MondoDB + Express.JS + Angular.JS + Node.JS — which is kind of ironic because considering the rapid evolution of the JavaScript ecosystem having an acronym like that will make no sense in a couple of months since now people prefer React-like libraries…
The entire sell of MongoDB in the Node community seems to be "it speaks JavaScript and you can store objects in it". Which of course fails to take into account any of the strengths and weaknesses of MongoDB (in the latter case especially the lack of cross-collection transactions or fast joins -- which in my experience account for 90% of the problems Node developers face with MongoDB).
The main reason MongoDB is popular in the Node community is that both reached peak hype around the same time. So it made perfect sense to bundle both of the "hottest" technologies together. Except by the point Angular 1 reached peak hype MongoDB was already facing criticism, so MEAN mostly seems to bask in its afterglow.
If you had asked me last month, my prediction would have been a RethinkDB+Node+React (or RethinkDB+Node+Angular2) stack popping up to challenge MEAN, though the RethinkDB+Node bit seems to have already been addressed by Rethink's own Horizon.
A while ago, I heard how good RethinkDB is and tried to check it out and found this page. https://rethinkdb.com/docs/sql-to-reql/javascript/ The more complex the query becomes I just felt everything was getting less intuitive compared to the SQL version and ended up not actually using it. For anyone who switched from SQL, I'd like to know how it felt to write RethinkDB queries. Did they start to feel fluent later on?
I have much love for the Rethink team. I am glad to see they are doing their best to support the community during this difficult time.
A while ago, I heard how good RethinkDB is and tried to check it out and found this page. https://rethinkdb.com/docs/sql-to-reql/javascript/ The more complex the query becomes I just felt everything was getting less intuitive compared to the SQL version and ended up not actually using it. For anyone who switched from SQL, I'd like to know how it felt to write RethinkDB queries. Did they start to feel fluent later on?
In general, I don't like those X-to-Y translation pages, when the underlying concepts fundamentally change. You can't use your existing sql mindset to translate to their query language, but instead try to learn from scratch.
We have a similar page at ArangoDB to help developers used to SQL to understand the general differences in AQL: https://www.arangodb.com/why-arangodb/sql-aql-comparison/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ever thought what do these salespeople do in a software company? This is what happens when salespeople fail to do enough of their thing. Sales are essential for a for-profit company.
So, maybe we should find a way to develop good technology that doesn't involve for-profit companies?
Why is there no "Pricing" section on their website? how were they making money? (if any)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always found that to be a perverse incentive model. I don't know how to do any better though. Maybe shaming companies that use OS projects heavily into donating? Not really sure how to scale that either.
I currently pay someone else to host a rethinkdb cluster. I'd rather pay rethinkdb.com to do that, but they didn't offer. I am sure they considered it and figured it wasn't a good model for them. It is unfortunate that I have (with much pleasure) used rethinkdb in several projects, yet haven't had a chance to pay them for a service that would be useful to me.
Very sad to hear, but hopefully the software will continue to be developed in an open source format. Keep this in mind when you invest in a certain technology: some organizations, especially nonprofits (for example, the Apache Software Foundation, Python Software Foundation, the new Node Foundation) are probably going to support and develop their software for extended periods of time relative to, say, a startup or fo…
This is why the key product should be open-source. Else it's too scary to invest in it: what if the company behind it folds, and you end up in a dead end? Only certain super-behemoths like Microsoft or Apple can afford to have their infrastructure products being closed-source.
The way this is dealt with for closed-source software is source-code escrow. The support contracts stipulate that the company that built the software set aside the code with some stable third party, and that it be available under specified conditions, such as the builders going out of business.
It's not as good as having the source freely available, but then it's dealing with an extreme contingency, anyway. Very, very few users of a piece of software have the expertise to build it from source and then debug it if they run into problems. So they're probably screwed either way if the builders go belly up.
> Only certain super-behemoths like Microsoft or Apple can afford to have their infrastructure products being closed-source.
The alternative is to buy truly critical software only from companies you trust a lot. XYZ Valley Startup is unlikely to be around in 20 years, but Oracle almost certainly will, as will Microsoft.
This shutdown therefore goes a long way to say how talented and ethically correct the team was, something extremely evident in how they put correctness and reliability in front of performance.
In short, RethinkDB is a very solid piece of software that does well where (many) other NoSQLs fall short, that is:
* easy HA and automatic failover
* easy auto sharding
* rational query language
* ease of administration and awareness (webUI)
* realtime capabilities
* perform well on the Jepsen test!