47 ms·

APL is cool - but the non-standard non-ASCII keyboard is a non-starter for reaching mass-market. Q sitting on top of K is the gateway drug to people using more

by anonu 8y ago

APL is cool - but the non-standard non-ASCII keyboard is a non-starter for reaching mass-market. Q sitting on top of K is the gateway drug to people using more APL-like languages and vector programming. However, we need an open-source alternative to KDB+. If you want to reach mass-market you need to be free and open and you need to provide something more than just a cool language. KDB+ adds a lot of important features for handling time-series, websockets, web programming and generally scaling up to a distributed system where you could connected different nodes to form a message bus or add your own micro-services framework on top. You can't do that yet with any of the open-source APL and APL-like frameworks I've seen.

avmich 8y ago
> However, we need an open-source alternative to KDB+. Would Jd (https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/Index https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/Index) be adequate here?
- stefano 8y ago
  It requires a license (https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/License#License https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/License#License).
  - avmich 8y ago
    From that link: > Non-commercial use is free. Do you mean that not only the DB has to be open source, but it also should be free-as-in-beer?
    - stefano 8y ago
      If you want mass adoption, yes. For whatever reason, few developers want to pay for their tools. Maybe we've been spoiled by all the open source ones. A few companies manage to get people to pay for tools (e.g. Unity, Visual Studio), but they're the exception, and it's more due to a lack of open source offerings with comparable features. No one would pay a license for a new JS framework or for a compiler outside of niches, which is where proprietary tools still survive. If you want mass adoption, you need a complete free offering (as in beer and as in freedom). Which sucks for the tool vendors, since that's a lot harder to monetize, if not impossible. On the other hand, it's a boon for people getting started since they can try out all these tools without a monetary investement, and it's great for companies who don't need to pay for the code they base their whole business on.
alfalfasprout 8y ago
It's sad how Kx systems decided to double down on making KDB so proprietary. Had they made some part of the ecosystem open source, we'd see mass adoption and they'd probably see more money from support contracts. There really is nothing out there like KDB that comes close for realtime manipulation and storage of ultra fast time series data.
- anonu 8y ago
  I agree - could've gone the MongoDB route...
deleted 8y ago
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by anonu 8y ago

avmich 8y ago

> However, we need an open-source alternative to KDB+. Would Jd (https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/Index https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/Index) be adequate here?

stefano 8y ago
It requires a license (https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/License#License https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/License#License).
- avmich 8y ago
  From that link: > Non-commercial use is free. Do you mean that not only the DB has to be open source, but it also should be free-as-in-beer?
  - stefano 8y ago
    If you want mass adoption, yes. For whatever reason, few developers want to pay for their tools. Maybe we've been spoiled by all the open source ones. A few companies manage to get people to pay for tools (e.g. Unity, Visual Studio), but they're the exception, and it's more due to a lack of open source offerings with comparable features. No one would pay a license for a new JS framework or for a compiler outside of niches, which is where proprietary tools still survive. If you want mass adoption, you need a complete free offering (as in beer and as in freedom). Which sucks for the tool vendors, since that's a lot harder to monetize, if not impossible. On the other hand, it's a boon for people getting started since they can try out all these tools without a monetary investement, and it's great for companies who don't need to pay for the code they base their whole business on.

alfalfasprout 8y ago

It's sad how Kx systems decided to double down on making KDB so proprietary. Had they made some part of the ecosystem open source, we'd see mass adoption and they'd probably see more money from support contracts. There really is nothing out there like KDB that comes close for realtime manipulation and storage of ultra fast time series data.

anonu 8y ago
I agree - could've gone the MongoDB route...

deleted 8y ago

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