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ClickHouse acquires Langfuse

langfuse.com

41–50 of 99 posts

Re: ClickHouse acquires Langfuse

#41
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The observability stuff can be nice for deployments but really, these libraries/frameworks don't actually do much more than provide some structure, which unless you're expecting a team with high turnover to maintain it, doesn't really matter all that much, especially if you're an experienced developer, you'll find better design/architectures fitting for your use case without them.

Hm I find this very much a "please reinvent the wheel" take. These frameworks provide structure for established patterns,but they also actually do a lot that you don't have to do anymore. If you are for example building an agentic application then these kind of frameworks make it very simple to create the workflows, do the chat with the model providers, provide structure for agentic skills, decision making and the hu…

> All stuff that I would consider "low level". All things you don't have to build.

But those are also very trivial to build, and you end up having to customize them for your need, and if the framework don't have those levers, better be prepared to either fork the framework, or spend time contributing upstream.

Or, start simple yourself with what you need, use libraries for the hairy parts you don't want to be responsible for the implementation of, then pipe these things together. You'll get a less compromised experience, and you'll understand 100% how everything works, which is the part people generally try to avoid and that's why they're reaching for frameworks.

> But if you like to move faster and using good building blocks then these frameworks really help.

I find that they help a lot with the "move faster" part in the beginning, but after that period, they slow you down instead. But I'm also a person that favors "slow software design and development" where you take your time to nail down a good design/architecture before you run. Slow is fast, and avoiding hairballs is the most important part if you're aiming for "move fast for longer" rather than "a sprint of fast".

Re: ClickHouse acquires Langfuse

#42
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would we? You can look at places with less funding and see how many software companies get off the ground.

> You can look at places with less funding Yeah, like FOSS which is drastically underfunded since birth, yet continues to put out software that the entire world ends up relying on, instead of relying on whatever VC-pumped companies are putting out. I'm not talking "better software" as in "made a lot of money", I meant "better" as in "had a better impact on the world".

FOSS software is written by people working at companies that likely owe their existence to VC.

Re: ClickHouse acquires Langfuse

#44
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors are finicky creatures, if you've been relying on VC-funding since before, it's hard to stop until you are really successful, and if everyone starts to only look at shiny AI stuff and you still need investors, you end up with not much choice. I wish there was less of it, we'd have better software then, but :/

Would we? You can look at places with less funding and see how many software companies get off the ground.

I sometimes wonder if the VC ecosystem creates its own confirmation bias by making it easy to see and aggregate companies it incubates. Whenever I look for jobs, I'm always surprised to find companies that have taken no VC funding and don't try particularly hard to market to the industry as a whole, preferring instead to stay relatively under the radar.

They tend to have more grounded financials (read: paths to profitability) and while the pay packages aren't quite aligned with the top end of the market, they also tend to manage headcount more responsibly than FAANG. I work with a fairly niche stack and I'm constantly finding new companies that I've never heard of and don't raise VC rounds.

Long way of saying that just because they're not easy to find doesn't mean they don't exist.

Re: ClickHouse acquires Langfuse

#45
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can look at places with less funding Yeah, like FOSS which is drastically underfunded since birth, yet continues to put out software that the entire world ends up relying on, instead of relying on whatever VC-pumped companies are putting out. I'm not talking "better software" as in "made a lot of money", I meant "better" as in "had a better impact on the world".

FOSS software is written by people working at companies that likely owe their existence to VC.

What gave you that idea?

Re: ClickHouse acquires Langfuse

#46
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can look at places with less funding Yeah, like FOSS which is drastically underfunded since birth, yet continues to put out software that the entire world ends up relying on, instead of relying on whatever VC-pumped companies are putting out. I'm not talking "better software" as in "made a lot of money", I meant "better" as in "had a better impact on the world".

FOSS software is written by people working at companies that likely owe their existence to VC.

That sounds like more sign of recent times.

FOSS software that many rely on that has been around for a while were non-VC: VCS, Linux / GNU / BSD, web browsers, various programming languages, various databases...

Re: ClickHouse acquires Langfuse

#47
post #17

> Our goal continues to be building the best LLM engineering platform Interesting headline for a checks notes time series database company.

Your notes aren't very good. They're not a time series database company, they're a columnar database company. But yeah the LLM bit is weird, database companies _always_ feel like charlatans when it comes to LLMs.

Willing to bet most columnar stores are used for time series.

Re: ClickHouse acquires Langfuse

#49

Ah, the painful migration to Clickhouse from v2 to v3 makes sense now https://langfuse.com/self-hosting/upgrade/upgrade-guides/upg...

This is not why v3 made those changes over a year ago, your cause & effect are mistaken
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