SurrealDB: Distributed document-graph database for the realtime web • Hacker News Board

Re: SurrealDB: Distributed document-graph database for the realtime web

#71

Post by varorav » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 4:06 AM UTC

supernes wrote: post #35

varorav wrote: post #25

Noob here - how do people usually assess DBs to one another? Why should I use this say over DynamoDB? Given concrete requirements or use cases it would be easier to compare given DB solutions, but when people are scoping something for say a new project, or a personal project (flexible requirements / motivation), how does that usually go down? If anyone has first hand experience on this :)

If your spec is entirely up in the air, you can start by replicating the examples. Lack of meaningful examples and/or in-depth documentation is the first red flag. You can also scan the reported issues to see if others are having trouble with core features, which is a sign of project immaturity. Either way, it always helps to have some basic use case in mind. Bigger than "Hello, World" and smaller than a MVP. The out…

Great point on being able to use motivating examples and testing out how user friendly the documentation and "getting started" is.

Re: SurrealDB: Distributed document-graph database for the realtime web

#72

Post by dragonsh » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #67

dragonsh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TiKV is written in rust but then it depends on crates which use C and libc. Rust complements C, it is not an alternative to C, just another alternative to C++. May be 20-30 years down the line, if it stays may be enough OS and libraries are built in native Rust without C then it might displace it, but at the moment Rust depends on C.

Rust is absolutely an alternative to C. The fact that Rust currently depends on C libc on some platforms is a pure implementation detail, and I believe there is ongoing work to remove that dependency.

C is implementation detail and that's what make it irreplaceable in short period of time. In my view Rust story will be similar to C++ if it continues to stay relevant for next 20-30 years and will be another alternative besides C++.

Right now Go is miles ahead of Rust when it comes to libraries and ecosystem. So it needs to catch up and once it overcomes Go popularity it might be nearer to C++. C is a different beast and will continue to be there it's the lingua franca of hardware programming and abstraction, unless something simpler comes and takes over which will also be 2-3 decades.

Re: SurrealDB: Distributed document-graph database for the realtime web

#73

Post by IshKebab » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 6:12 PM UTC

dragonsh wrote: post #72

IshKebab wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust is absolutely an alternative to C. The fact that Rust currently depends on C libc on some platforms is a pure implementation detail, and I believe there is ongoing work to remove that dependency.

C is implementation detail and that's what make it irreplaceable in short period of time. In my view Rust story will be similar to C++ if it continues to stay relevant for next 20-30 years and will be another alternative besides C++. Right now Go is miles ahead of Rust when it comes to libraries and ecosystem. So it needs to catch up and once it overcomes Go popularity it might be nearer to C++. C is a different beas…

> Right now Go is miles ahead of Rust when it comes to libraries and ecosystem.

I'm not sure that's true. A couple of years ago sure, but Rust is growing very fast.

I also think there's no reason to think C will stay around forever. The C ABI will be the lingua franca, but that doesn't mean you need to actually use C.

The only reason it has persisted for so long is lack of alternatives, but now we have at least Zig and Rust. Obviously there's a ton of momentum so it will still take a while to be replaced but I wouldn't be surprised if e.g. musl switches to Zig or Rust fairly soon.

Re: SurrealDB: Distributed document-graph database for the realtime web

#74

Post by dragonsh » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #73

dragonsh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C is implementation detail and that's what make it irreplaceable in short period of time. In my view Rust story will be similar to C++ if it continues to stay relevant for next 20-30 years and will be another alternative besides C++. Right now Go is miles ahead of Rust when it comes to libraries and ecosystem. So it needs to catch up and once it overcomes Go popularity it might be nearer to C++. C is a different beas…

> Right now Go is miles ahead of Rust when it comes to libraries and ecosystem. I'm not sure that's true. A couple of years ago sure, but Rust is growing very fast. I also think there's no reason to think C will stay around forever. The C ABI will be the lingua franca, but that doesn't mean you need to actually use C. The only reason it has persisted for so long is lack of alternatives, but now we have at least Zig a…

> I'm not sure that's true

I am sure its true, given Kubernetes, Docker and related projects, CockroachDB, prometheus, influxdb, nomad, otto, consul, grafana, terraform, snap, juju, Caddy, SeaweedFS, minio, milvus, syncthing, cilium are some of the examples in Go. Indeed it will be safe to say Go is one of the prominent language like Java, Python, C, C++ powering the internet. Rust still has a mountain to cross to reach even half as much usage as Go, except TiKV, Rust itself and Servo I don't see large open source software in Rust yet.

There is a lot of talk about it on HN and may be given 20-30 years it might become more widespread. Rust is still recovering from its failure of Servo not being used by Mozilla, given it failed to live up to expectations of replacing C++ in Firefox due to performance issues and resolving them within time constraints of project budget.