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Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#41

Post by ex3ndr »

I really want to simplify writing backend logic and implement everything like functions that reacts on some events and produce another one's. This is a very very looks like, Actor Model (Akka) plus Redux's Reduces: We have just a bunch of a state changing rules and they can be executed reliably and with decent performance.

Something very simple (for example for Build Server):

Build Failed (Event) -> Assign responsible user for a crash -> Send Notification -> Deliver Notification via user's configured notification systems (email, push, sms..)

This is a Event Sourcing, but event sourcing works well only for one part of the platform - write side, but reader side is sometimes too hard to implement. Sometimes there are a problems with eventual consistency and you actually need to wait while some of the reducers in chain will process this event and starting from this point everything became toooo slow to develop and you basically start to redevelop the wheel - this is just a database engine de-factor. Meh.

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#42

Post by foobarchu »

gfodor wrote: post #32

I don't think anyone has solved the issues raised in Out of the Tar Pit in the data storage space. We still spend a ton of effort, perhaps more than ever before, wrangling incidental complexity. In 2018, I should be able to define a simple relational schema in 30 seconds and start using it with effectively zero constraints around data access patterns, transaction volume, and data scale, and with no design decisions n…

This has always been my biggest complaint with Cassandra. It performs and works fantastic if you have the right usage patterns, but if you don't fit into that pattern then you need to mold your usage so that it will fit, or risk the consequences. Using Cassandra effectively is pretty much impossible without knowledge of it's internals and consideration of what effect your usage patterns will have on those internals, which IMO kind of defeats the purpose of a database (keep my data, give it back when I ask).

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#43

Post by jimmy1 »

chubot wrote: post #14

I want a distributed (not cloud) file system that handles many files and WAN latency (i.e. not HDFS). It might be a cross between Git and BitTorrent. It feels like deb repos, PyPI, NPM, CPAN, CRAN, etc. should be put in there, with the addition of binaries for popular architectures. And probably Docker-like images, although I think if they are not opaque blobs, it would be better for rsync-like differential compressi…

Upspin? https://upspin.io/

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#44

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

CryoLogic wrote: post #25

1. Static Website generators for non-blogs 2. Half decent wrapper libraries for tools like FFMPEG in NPM 3. Plug and Play game server with stat tracking that can be easily used for any game 4. More versatile compression formats for media, ability to serve up 360/720/1080 from the same file?

1. It's hard to give constructive help without more information. Why not write a script that compiles a bunch of pages into html? As the other comment said, there's also stuff like jekyll. Maybe you could provide some use-cases?

2. Explain your use-cases? Why not call ffmpeg directly? You'll need to familiarize yourself with the original library functionality anyway, no?

3. No opinion. Not particularly interested in games. Might be hard to generalize, maybe?

4. Versatile in what sense? What are your complaints with existing media formats? I think licensing is an issue, but stuff like VP9 and Opus seem to take care of that matter. I'm not an expert, but I think both MP4 and MKV can already hold an unlimited number of media files.

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#45

Post by declnz »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #29
thesmallestcat wrote: post #4

Static website generators.

I would argue content management systems for static website generators like cloudcannon.com could be better. We already have jekyll and hugo

And Hakyll [1]

[1] https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#46

Post by wenc »

tmaly wrote: post #36

Given the sheer number of services on AWS, I would like an expert system that would query me for requirements and then suggest a set of possible services to use together to solve my problem.

Meanwhile you can use this to get a quick overview of the services offered. Amazon should put this up on their AWS main page.

AWS in Plain English https://www.expeditedssl.com/aws-in-plain-english

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#48

Post by dozzie »

> It seems like there are so many choices in each category that there's nothing left to do.

Log storage and search for structured logs (e.g. JSON or CEE, not merely stringblobs). We have paid solutions (Splunk, Loggly, Papertrail), and then we have Elasticsearch, which gets worse in this use scenario with every release.

Message stream processing engine that doesn't require restarting to add a query or data sink, so you could build monitoring system around it. In fact, a monitoring system designed to allow you to easily add your custom processing or data sink.

Infrastructure inventory that can be both filled by hand and kept updated by machine and that can be queried from script or browsed by human. For that it would be useful to have a good topic maps engine, which is another missing thing.

OS updates manager that can handle more than just Red Hat/CentOS (Red Hat Satellite or Spacewalk) or just Ubuntu (Canonical Landscape), and while at it, one that doesn't try to be underdeveloped configuration management tool (like CFEngine or Puppet) and underdeveloped deployment tool (like Ansible), but can cooperate with them.

And there's much more where these came from.

Re: Ask HN: Is there server-side software that we are missing in 2018?

#49

Post by jedberg »

A workload-aware data distribution proxy.

Let me explain. A lot of people talk about multi-cloud these days. Either AWS and Azure, or AWS and their own datacenter, or whatever.

While it's really easy to send compute jobs to one cloud or the other based on which one is best suited for the job, the big issue is that your compute job will need data. Right now your choices are to have a copy of all your data in all the clouds (a very expensive proposition since you'd be constantly shipping updates across very expensive outbound connections) or to have all your data in one place and have the compute jobs reach out across the internet to get it (also expensive and now there is latency for every job too).

I want a proxy that is smart enough to say "Workload X is usually done on AWS, and requires data points Y and Z, so make sure Y and Z are always up to date on AWS, but lazy update Y and Z to GCE in batches through the cheapest direct connect possible".

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