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I wonder if I'm the only sysadmin in the world who doesn't hate MongoDB. Yes, I wouldn't use it for new projects, and yes, I wish RethinkDB had taken its place,

I wonder if I'm the only sysadmin in the world who doesn't hate MongoDB. Yes, I wouldn't use it for new projects, and yes, I wish RethinkDB had taken its place, but it's not as horrible as people seem to think. Default configuration... If it weren't for RDS' doing PG-bouncer-style connection management, 95% of production postgres instances would probably fail. It innodb_buffer_pool_size wasn't set properly, plenty of data-centers would light on fire. If no one setup a firewall or AOF for redis, it's data-loss and data-exposure waiting to happen. If no one adds auth to an HTTP route, it's open to the world, etc etc etc. If tech-stacks were legos, software engineers would earn a heck of a lot less. I absolutely agree it's been used by people who just don't want to write SQL queries, or being used as a text-search-engine in place of something like more appropriate like ElasticSearch, but to mock successful projects who were based on it seems silly. It reminds me of interviewing candidates at a startup who primarily used PHP/MySQL. Most of them openly laughed and called it all horrible. I voted "no" on them, and sometimes injected a somewhat toxic "ah, you're right - we should close up shop. Someone call Facebook - tell them their tech stack is horrible - shut it all down!". You can learn a lot about a developer by asking "What do you think about Mongo, JavaScript, or PHP", and if their response isn't a shrug, they're probably more concerned with what editor is correct than if the product they're building is useful. It's an exceptional filter to reject zealots and find pragmatists. All that said, MariaDB with MyRocks is _awesome_, but certainly not with the default settings :)

isatty 6y ago
> You can learn a lot about a developer by asking "What do you think about Mongo, JavaScript, or PHP", and if their response isn't a shrug, they're probably more concerned with what editor is correct than if the product they're building is useful. It's an exceptional filter to reject zealots and find pragmatists. Sure, if they’re being rude about it. A developer saying that it will not fit the use case or talking about spending a month of their time fixing a production issue caused by MongoDB will definitely not get a “no” from me. I’m not hiring subservient people I’m hiring people who can think for themselves and choose the right tool for the job, which Mongo rarely is.
- erulabs 6y ago
  Yes, I couldn't agree more. Didn't mean people can't have opinions of course - just that they shouldn't be scoffing/laughing at tools - to me its a particularly red flag. Not wanting to use a particular tool is totally fine!
  - kyberias 6y ago
    > just that they shouldn't be scoffing/laughing at tools Why on earth would that be a problem? Why are you sensitive about tools? Do the tools have feelings?
    - erulabs 6y ago
      Tools are just tools. Imagine scoffing at someone using a hammer, when in your less experienced opinion, they should be using NewHammer3.1. Tools are means to an end. I much prefer working with people who care about the product and the business than what tools they used to build said product/business. I'm looking for "hey, you could save a lot of time by using tool Y", rather than "You people are idiots for even considering tool Z".
      - kyberias 6y ago
        No. I can certainly imagine anyone scoffing at someone using a hammer when they are trying to dig a hole in the ground screaming "Tools are just tools!" So yes, writing a website with assembler raises eyebrows and it is quite OK to ridicule bad languages such as PHP.
        erulabs 6y ago
        You must know that's a fairly ridiculous reading of what I wrote...
ianamartin 6y ago
RethinkDB is a better solution to every problem that MongoDB claims to solve. I wouldn't use it for everything. But once my need for a document store outgrows what's convenient and easy in Postgres with JSONB, I reach for Rethink. It's great. There's a Jepsen analysis of it a while back too that is quite positive. It's a shame that Rethink did so many things right and failed as a company while Mongo continues to do almost everything wrong as a company and still gets business.
- rixed 6y ago
  > It's a shame that Rethink did so many things right and failed as a company while Mongo continues to do almost everything wrong as a company and still gets business. This seems to be more the rule than the exception, doesn't it? It's even not that hard to come up with explanations for this, main one certainly being that popularity depends essentially upon simplicity. And simplicity might not even be economically as inept as we would like it to be. Indeed, since only a small minority of all the systems that are designed reach production and stay there for long then it can make sense to use the quickest piece of junk available, at least until proven it will stick.
- akamaozu 6y ago
  My current data solution is layers of code on top of redis, trying really hard to be everything Rethink was. Easy access to changelogs should be an "easy to access" feature in all databases. Event driven systems aren't rare: the data store needs to be done to tell interested parties that underlying data has changed.
- coffeemug 6y ago
  Imagine how I feel about it :)

isatty 6y ago

> You can learn a lot about a developer by asking "What do you think about Mongo, JavaScript, or PHP", and if their response isn't a shrug, they're probably more concerned with what editor is correct than if the product they're building is useful. It's an exceptional filter to reject zealots and find pragmatists. Sure, if they’re being rude about it. A developer saying that it will not fit the use case or talking about spending a month of their time fixing a production issue caused by MongoDB will definitely not get a “no” from me. I’m not hiring subservient people I’m hiring people who can think for themselves and choose the right tool for the job, which Mongo rarely is.

erulabs 6y ago
Yes, I couldn't agree more. Didn't mean people can't have opinions of course - just that they shouldn't be scoffing/laughing at tools - to me its a particularly red flag. Not wanting to use a particular tool is totally fine!
- kyberias 6y ago
  > just that they shouldn't be scoffing/laughing at tools Why on earth would that be a problem? Why are you sensitive about tools? Do the tools have feelings?
  - erulabs 6y ago
    Tools are just tools. Imagine scoffing at someone using a hammer, when in your less experienced opinion, they should be using NewHammer3.1. Tools are means to an end. I much prefer working with people who care about the product and the business than what tools they used to build said product/business. I'm looking for "hey, you could save a lot of time by using tool Y", rather than "You people are idiots for even considering tool Z".
    - kyberias 6y ago
      No. I can certainly imagine anyone scoffing at someone using a hammer when they are trying to dig a hole in the ground screaming "Tools are just tools!" So yes, writing a website with assembler raises eyebrows and it is quite OK to ridicule bad languages such as PHP.
      - erulabs 6y ago
        You must know that's a fairly ridiculous reading of what I wrote...

ianamartin 6y ago

RethinkDB is a better solution to every problem that MongoDB claims to solve. I wouldn't use it for everything. But once my need for a document store outgrows what's convenient and easy in Postgres with JSONB, I reach for Rethink. It's great. There's a Jepsen analysis of it a while back too that is quite positive. It's a shame that Rethink did so many things right and failed as a company while Mongo continues to do almost everything wrong as a company and still gets business.

rixed 6y ago
> It's a shame that Rethink did so many things right and failed as a company while Mongo continues to do almost everything wrong as a company and still gets business. This seems to be more the rule than the exception, doesn't it? It's even not that hard to come up with explanations for this, main one certainly being that popularity depends essentially upon simplicity. And simplicity might not even be economically as inept as we would like it to be. Indeed, since only a small minority of all the systems that are designed reach production and stay there for long then it can make sense to use the quickest piece of junk available, at least until proven it will stick.
akamaozu 6y ago
My current data solution is layers of code on top of redis, trying really hard to be everything Rethink was. Easy access to changelogs should be an "easy to access" feature in all databases. Event driven systems aren't rare: the data store needs to be done to tell interested parties that underlying data has changed.
coffeemug 6y ago
Imagine how I feel about it :)