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have always wondered why this didn't succeed on a larger scale Maybe in a v0 release, most applications can get away with created & modified fields. Maybe the

have always wondered why this didn't succeed on a larger scale Maybe in a v0 release, most applications can get away with created & modified fields. Maybe the storage overhead of immutability scares people for some applications. Maybe datomic is something that should be part of a powerful DB plugins ecosystem rather than its own database, or as an external audit log that can be written separately while keeping your main DB in SQL.

erikpukinskis 7y ago
It seems to me that you need to be all-in on Datomic to get value from it. So that knocks out anyone working with a legacy system. You also can’t really hire Datomic people in bulk so that knocks out anyone trying to scale their eng org. I can see it working well for companies who are trying to do a lot with a small very bright staff, but that’s a small category. And even then it would only be places where the staff has consensus around immutability as a value. Which... immutability, like many forms of strictness, is both a PITA and not actually that helpful unless you go all in. It’s just a major commitment and for what benefit? Maybe for a product where you need rewind everywhere. Maybe for a product where you need extreme auditability. I don’t know... what’s the killer feature that would make someone sacrifice everything else to use it? Personally I think Datomic needs to be paired with a hosting system, debugging tools, basically some kind of integrated development environment that’s immutable-first in every respect. Something like that would be powerfully differentiated.
- fulafel 7y ago
  You don't need to be all-in on Datomic, it's unsuitable for some kinds of data (eg binary blobs, or generally text due to the 4k string limit, PII due to missing delete support, etc). It seems designed to be used along with ancillary data stores. I think the benefits have been pretty well laid out and are quite attractive, your restatement of them is just damnation with faint praise :)
- anentropic 7y ago
  > Maybe for a product where you need rewind everywhere. > Maybe for a product where you need extreme auditability. These are "nice to have"s or "wish I had it but it's too late now"s for a lot of products though

erikpukinskis 7y ago

It seems to me that you need to be all-in on Datomic to get value from it. So that knocks out anyone working with a legacy system. You also can’t really hire Datomic people in bulk so that knocks out anyone trying to scale their eng org. I can see it working well for companies who are trying to do a lot with a small very bright staff, but that’s a small category. And even then it would only be places where the staff has consensus around immutability as a value. Which... immutability, like many forms of strictness, is both a PITA and not actually that helpful unless you go all in. It’s just a major commitment and for what benefit? Maybe for a product where you need rewind everywhere. Maybe for a product where you need extreme auditability. I don’t know... what’s the killer feature that would make someone sacrifice everything else to use it? Personally I think Datomic needs to be paired with a hosting system, debugging tools, basically some kind of integrated development environment that’s immutable-first in every respect. Something like that would be powerfully differentiated.

fulafel 7y ago
You don't need to be all-in on Datomic, it's unsuitable for some kinds of data (eg binary blobs, or generally text due to the 4k string limit, PII due to missing delete support, etc). It seems designed to be used along with ancillary data stores. I think the benefits have been pretty well laid out and are quite attractive, your restatement of them is just damnation with faint praise :)
anentropic 7y ago
> Maybe for a product where you need rewind everywhere. > Maybe for a product where you need extreme auditability. These are "nice to have"s or "wish I had it but it's too late now"s for a lot of products though