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0 pointsdelusional2y ago0 comments

> what we’ve built is just a cursor streaming a binary file feed with a very limited set of functionality - but then again, it’s the exact functionality we need and we didn’t lose any features.

The trick is that they didn't need a database that provides "Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (ACID)". By only implementing what they need they were able to keep the project small.

It's like people are scared of doing anything without making it into some huge multi hundred developer effort. They've written a super simple append only document store. It's not rocket science. It's not a general purpose arbitrary SQL database.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

vannevar2y ago· 1 in thread

If it's really true that they only needed a "cursor streaming binary file feed with a very limited set of functionality", then why claim in the headline they wrote their own database and begin the article with the observation that doing ACID databases is really hard?

Maybe they really built only what they needed. If so, good on them, but ditch the clickbait title. On the other hand, a lot of people believe that they've built only what they need, only to discover in a week or a month or a year that they underestimated their own requirements. Then they gradually re-learn all the lessons that led to the development of real databases, to their eventual sorrow.

politician2y ago

OTOH, the Bitcask paper can be implemented in about a week for a write-ahead log that’ll give you pretty strong guarantees.

mbrumlow2y ago

This.

Everything we are teaching people to do is centered around solving the problems with already built services, preferably from one of the big 3 cloud vendors.

We are churning out “qualified” engineers who don’t know how anything works and we pay them to configure a few AWS services.

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