5 ms·

Man, am I ever a dummy! I look at the diagram on that page and it might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphs to me. I'd have to study that thing one long time to eve

by jb1991 8y ago

Man, am I ever a dummy! I look at the diagram on that page and it might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphs to me. I'd have to study that thing one long time to even understand what problem Ions is solving. I'm sure it's a real problem with an interesting solution, but geez the modern Cloud world has really gotten quite complex. I feel particularly silly because I've been writing Clojure professionally for many years.

baxtr 8y ago
There are always two sides to this... I think it’s badly communicated. Someone said (I don’t find the quote), that if you can’t explain a complex topic in simple words, you haven’t understood it thoroughly.
- cube2222 8y ago
  Einstein said this, but he also said: Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler.
- VaedaStrike 8y ago
  If you know Clojure and AWS I really don’t think it is poorly communicated. There’s a limit to that idiom of simplicity and understanding being correlated. This was a walk through of the mechanics. The TL;DR is if you are comfortable enough in AWS and Clojure implementing your system in a scalable and simple and wholistic way just got a bunch more accessibile.
  - zimablue 8y ago
    I've written a clojure app, used aws and lambda functions and skimming this I really wasn't sure wtf they were talking about. Datomic... Something something lambda functions, deployment. I know that they have an existing ami that uses a cloudformation template to let you set up a datomic server on AWS, this is something similar maybe? I think I could get it if I read in detail but this is definitely poorly communicated, it reads like old Microsoft enterprise sales copy.
nickik 8y ago
This is about Datomic, not really Clojure. So if you don't have experience with Datomic Clojure understanding would not really help you. Seems to me this is a combination of Datomic and Amazon Lambda to deploy programs that can use Datomic without all surrounding deployment problems.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  >Ions let you develop applications for the cloud by deploying your code to a running Datomic cluster I could be totally off base here as I have no real experience with clojure, but this intro sentence threw me off right away. >Ions let you develop applications for the cloud by deploying your code to a running Datomic cluster What is an ion? What is a "datomic cluster"? Are these terms just new jargon for what is essentially a deployment system? If they're a clojure thing then ok, but a quick search makes me think they're not. I understand software and I understand deployment. I read the rest of the page and I feel like I would have to problem understanding what this really is if they cut down on the jargon.
  - nickik 8y ago
    Ion is a name as far as I know. Datomic is a database consists of multiple services so you can deploy it on one machine or multiple. I called it a cluster because on AWS of course the idea is to deploy it on multiple. Amazon Lambda is a way to deploy code without telling Amazon about the underlying machines/VMs. Ion is a way to deploy Clojure and Datomic without knowing anything about the underlying machines or VMs.
  - paradigmshiv 8y ago
    Datomic is an immutable database, written in Clojure. It's pretty cool, you should check it out. The company behind Datomic (Cognitect, which also develops the Clojure language) recently started offering the database as a cloud service. This was something Datomic users had wanted for a long time, but one problem with the new service was that one of Datomic's primary features, i.e. having the database reside in memory with your application, was missing. Ions is a new service that addresses this problem by allowing you to deploy your app to the same VMs that are hosting Datomic in the cloud (a "datomic cluster"). It's basically PaaS for Datomic-backed applications. I'm a longtime Clojure user and I had some trouble understanding all this as well, so I agree that could do a better job with presentation.
JBiserkov 8y ago
In addition to the linked page there's also a tutorial https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/ions/ions-tutorial.html https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/ions/ions-tutorial.html and a reference https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/ions/ions-reference.html https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/ions/ions-reference.html

by jb1991 8y ago

baxtr 8y ago

There are always two sides to this... I think it’s badly communicated. Someone said (I don’t find the quote), that if you can’t explain a complex topic in simple words, you haven’t understood it thoroughly.

cube2222 8y ago
Einstein said this, but he also said: Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler.
VaedaStrike 8y ago
If you know Clojure and AWS I really don’t think it is poorly communicated. There’s a limit to that idiom of simplicity and understanding being correlated. This was a walk through of the mechanics. The TL;DR is if you are comfortable enough in AWS and Clojure implementing your system in a scalable and simple and wholistic way just got a bunch more accessibile.
- zimablue 8y ago
  I've written a clojure app, used aws and lambda functions and skimming this I really wasn't sure wtf they were talking about. Datomic... Something something lambda functions, deployment. I know that they have an existing ami that uses a cloudformation template to let you set up a datomic server on AWS, this is something similar maybe? I think I could get it if I read in detail but this is definitely poorly communicated, it reads like old Microsoft enterprise sales copy.

nickik 8y ago

This is about Datomic, not really Clojure. So if you don't have experience with Datomic Clojure understanding would not really help you. Seems to me this is a combination of Datomic and Amazon Lambda to deploy programs that can use Datomic without all surrounding deployment problems.

EpicEng 8y ago
>Ions let you develop applications for the cloud by deploying your code to a running Datomic cluster I could be totally off base here as I have no real experience with clojure, but this intro sentence threw me off right away. >Ions let you develop applications for the cloud by deploying your code to a running Datomic cluster What is an ion? What is a "datomic cluster"? Are these terms just new jargon for what is essentially a deployment system? If they're a clojure thing then ok, but a quick search makes me think they're not. I understand software and I understand deployment. I read the rest of the page and I feel like I would have to problem understanding what this really is if they cut down on the jargon.
- nickik 8y ago
  Ion is a name as far as I know. Datomic is a database consists of multiple services so you can deploy it on one machine or multiple. I called it a cluster because on AWS of course the idea is to deploy it on multiple. Amazon Lambda is a way to deploy code without telling Amazon about the underlying machines/VMs. Ion is a way to deploy Clojure and Datomic without knowing anything about the underlying machines or VMs.
- paradigmshiv 8y ago
  Datomic is an immutable database, written in Clojure. It's pretty cool, you should check it out. The company behind Datomic (Cognitect, which also develops the Clojure language) recently started offering the database as a cloud service. This was something Datomic users had wanted for a long time, but one problem with the new service was that one of Datomic's primary features, i.e. having the database reside in memory with your application, was missing. Ions is a new service that addresses this problem by allowing you to deploy your app to the same VMs that are hosting Datomic in the cloud (a "datomic cluster"). It's basically PaaS for Datomic-backed applications. I'm a longtime Clojure user and I had some trouble understanding all this as well, so I agree that could do a better job with presentation.

JBiserkov 8y ago

In addition to the linked page there's also a tutorial https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/ions/ions-tutorial.html https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/ions/ions-tutorial.html and a reference https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/ions/ions-reference.html https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/ions/ions-reference.html