5 ms·

Pretty strange how no one else sees that banks are very very fragile institutions, plus this one is heavily VC-ed, which makes everything they claim in public i

Pretty strange how no one else sees that banks are very very fragile institutions, plus this one is heavily VC-ed, which makes everything they claim in public irrelevant (this is if we want to trust what any bank says at all). What is relevant is that Cognitect will now have 100% of income coming from the single (and fragile) source, they now do not have to compete and survive on their own, they can't say "no" when having a choice between having to conform or quit the only money source. I am not discussing personalities here - people are free to choose how to sell their products or themselves. Just thinking what this means to me as a software consultant who makes 100% of money from Clojure (yes, a fragile single choice because of sort of falling in love)

qroshan 6y ago
Yeah, very strange for a bank to buy a technology stack company. Why? It strategically doesn't make any sense, unless the bank wanted Clojure/Datomic to prioritize their features and requirements. What would it mean for adoption?
whoisjuan 6y ago
How is a bank a fragile institution? Banks are the most heavily insured and protected institutions in any modern country. In the US for example, banks not only contribute to federal insurance but also have built joint private reserves to weather economic turmoil. In the modern world banks rarely go bankrupt because if they did that would tank any confidence in the economy and create incredible chaos. Even in failed states like Venezuela banks are still a major pillar of economy confidence.
- juskrey 6y ago
  This is simply false - banks are not insured against failure and not protected unless some political move "too big to fail" is made, and this only makes systemic financial system failures worse.
  - jwr 6y ago
    Whether this is false depends on particular country laws. For example in the EU you can't call yourself a "bank" without being subject to regulation, and in Poland for example, if you are a "bank", your money is actually protected against failure, up to €100,000.
    - juskrey 6y ago
      Deposits insurance has nothing to do with that.
  - whoisjuan 6y ago
    > Banks are not insured against failure and not protected. Well. Except they are. In the US not only at the federal level but also at the state level: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deposit_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deposit_insurance - https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/ https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corp... - https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/business/bank-earnings-defaults-recession/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/business/bank-earnings-defaul...
    - cemerick 6y ago
      You are mistaking what is insured here. Deposits are insured, the banks themselves are not. Here's the list of banks that have failed in the US and for which their deposits entered receivership managed by the FDIC; looks like a handful every year: https://www.fdic.gov/Bank/individual/failed/banklist.html https://www.fdic.gov/Bank/individual/failed/banklist.html
      - whoisjuan 6y ago
        I'm not. I was trying to point to the OP that banks aren't as fragile as he think they are. When the very nature of your business, which is handling people's money, is federally insured, you have mitigated a lot of risk. Yes banks can fail and they can go bankrupt, and if that happens to Nubank then this acquisition goes to hell which makes the Clojure ecosystem weaker. I give that to OP. But saying that banks are "very very" fragile institutions I think is fundamentally wrong.
- raphaeljlps 6y ago
  Just to clarify, Nubank is not an actual/formal bank in Brazil. They have operating licenses as Financial institution and Payment institution though.
- moocowtruck 6y ago
  > In the US for example, banks not only contribute to federal insurance but also have built joint private reserves to weather economic turmoil. did you miss how the banks all had to be bailed out a few years back?
  - whoisjuan 6y ago
    Well I’m talking about present time. Past your cynical take, the reality is that the last crisis was exactly the reason why banks in the US have been growing their cash on hand the last decade faster than they did the two decades before that, while putting aside money on other reserves. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/business/bank-earnings-defaults-recession/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/business/bank-earnings-defaul...
jonahbenton 6y ago
With respect, I see where you are coming from, but would argue it isn't necessarily the right read, either in terms of banks, or in terms of Clojure, though there is nuance. Banks are systemic actors in the financial system. They have privileges granted only to them, requirements that only they have to meet. It is HARD to build and operate a bank, whether in the US or in another country. From a "fragility" perspective- there are a lot of definitions of fragility, but when looking at attributes like- may fail at any time; may lose customer assets; may take on inappropriate risks given their systemic position; have negative systemic impact on larger financial system operations- whatever attributes you think of, the amount of energy that goes into oversight around those attributes is significantly larger for banks than any other "systemic" industry (real estate, health, whatever). The number of health oversight agencies in the US is, like, 5. The number of financial oversight agencies is in the dozens, just at the federal level. (This is why in the US you sue for medical malpractice but not financial malpractice, and why there is government backed financial insurance of various kinds and much less health insurance. You are on your own in the health industry. In finance there are armies around). Banks have like 10 different kinds of risk that they and their supervision are monitoring for. Yes, banks fail, but that's because people suck and are bad at things and the second law of thermodynamics and so forth. It isn't necessarily the same in other countries but banking, like many other industries, is increasingly global, and banking core systems are increasingly international. Nubank is clearly doing a LOT of things right- I saw a presentation in person from them in February and it blew my mind the level of capability and abstraction they were working at. They are a solid entity with a strong growth path. Cognitect, in contrast, is a tiny consulting firm. Maybe 50 employees? Technical consulting at scale is an incredibly hard business, particularly when your solution domain is limited to a particular toolchain. There was really no chance Cognitect was ever going to become Thoughtworks, or Deloitte, or anyone like that. That's an infinitely more fragile financial situation for Clojure than living under the roof of a business with a valuation in the billions. The way to think about this is that all technologies have a sponsor. Clojure moves from basically being sponsored by a guy in his backyard to, like PHP (Etsy has a market cap of around $10B and employs the PHP leader). That's huge. Beyond that, having what should become a more well known and reputable player in the financial industry backing it- you could well see A LOT MORE adoption from enterprises playing copycat. It's not going to happen right away, but it is a seminal step in COMPLETELY changing the enterprise adoption calculation. However, everything is a tradeoff. If you aren't working with Datomic, or in finance- this move is a stronger statement that maybe Clojure doesn't have the strongest future for you. It isn't going to become a lot of other things that it could become. The finance industry has a fondness for languages with weird syntax, and those languages often stay in the finance industry niche. That's probably where Clojure stays. There are all sorts of wicked cool JVM things like LMAX and Azul that are also financial industry specific, and Clojure and Datomic get to become one of those. Very successful, very cool, but niche. Anyway- hope that's helpful, happy to continue the conversation. Cheers.
latortuga 6y ago
Cognitect is not winding down Datomic, Datomic Cloud, or Datomic consulting, and they have big name customers including Facebook and Netflix.
dustingetz 6y ago
Nubank raised nearly a billion $ since 2018, hard to see that being bad in any possible way for Datomic to have access to those resources
- juskrey 6y ago
  That billion is not a charity, but comes with some people pursuing some things. Most of the time that "things" are to make a PR stunt, inflate and sell.

qroshan 6y ago

Yeah, very strange for a bank to buy a technology stack company. Why? It strategically doesn't make any sense, unless the bank wanted Clojure/Datomic to prioritize their features and requirements. What would it mean for adoption?

whoisjuan 6y ago

How is a bank a fragile institution? Banks are the most heavily insured and protected institutions in any modern country. In the US for example, banks not only contribute to federal insurance but also have built joint private reserves to weather economic turmoil. In the modern world banks rarely go bankrupt because if they did that would tank any confidence in the economy and create incredible chaos. Even in failed states like Venezuela banks are still a major pillar of economy confidence.

juskrey 6y ago
This is simply false - banks are not insured against failure and not protected unless some political move "too big to fail" is made, and this only makes systemic financial system failures worse.
- jwr 6y ago
  Whether this is false depends on particular country laws. For example in the EU you can't call yourself a "bank" without being subject to regulation, and in Poland for example, if you are a "bank", your money is actually protected against failure, up to €100,000.
  - juskrey 6y ago
    Deposits insurance has nothing to do with that.
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  > Banks are not insured against failure and not protected. Well. Except they are. In the US not only at the federal level but also at the state level: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deposit_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deposit_insurance - https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/ https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Deposit_Insurance_Corp... - https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/business/bank-earnings-defaults-recession/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/business/bank-earnings-defaul...
  - cemerick 6y ago
    You are mistaking what is insured here. Deposits are insured, the banks themselves are not. Here's the list of banks that have failed in the US and for which their deposits entered receivership managed by the FDIC; looks like a handful every year: https://www.fdic.gov/Bank/individual/failed/banklist.html https://www.fdic.gov/Bank/individual/failed/banklist.html
    - whoisjuan 6y ago
      I'm not. I was trying to point to the OP that banks aren't as fragile as he think they are. When the very nature of your business, which is handling people's money, is federally insured, you have mitigated a lot of risk. Yes banks can fail and they can go bankrupt, and if that happens to Nubank then this acquisition goes to hell which makes the Clojure ecosystem weaker. I give that to OP. But saying that banks are "very very" fragile institutions I think is fundamentally wrong.
raphaeljlps 6y ago
Just to clarify, Nubank is not an actual/formal bank in Brazil. They have operating licenses as Financial institution and Payment institution though.
moocowtruck 6y ago
> In the US for example, banks not only contribute to federal insurance but also have built joint private reserves to weather economic turmoil. did you miss how the banks all had to be bailed out a few years back?
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  Well I’m talking about present time. Past your cynical take, the reality is that the last crisis was exactly the reason why banks in the US have been growing their cash on hand the last decade faster than they did the two decades before that, while putting aside money on other reserves. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/business/bank-earnings-defaults-recession/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/business/bank-earnings-defaul...

jonahbenton 6y ago

With respect, I see where you are coming from, but would argue it isn't necessarily the right read, either in terms of banks, or in terms of Clojure, though there is nuance. Banks are systemic actors in the financial system. They have privileges granted only to them, requirements that only they have to meet. It is HARD to build and operate a bank, whether in the US or in another country. From a "fragility" perspective- there are a lot of definitions of fragility, but when looking at attributes like- may fail at any time; may lose customer assets; may take on inappropriate risks given their systemic position; have negative systemic impact on larger financial system operations- whatever attributes you think of, the amount of energy that goes into oversight around those attributes is significantly larger for banks than any other "systemic" industry (real estate, health, whatever). The number of health oversight agencies in the US is, like, 5. The number of financial oversight agencies is in the dozens, just at the federal level. (This is why in the US you sue for medical malpractice but not financial malpractice, and why there is government backed financial insurance of various kinds and much less health insurance. You are on your own in the health industry. In finance there are armies around). Banks have like 10 different kinds of risk that they and their supervision are monitoring for. Yes, banks fail, but that's because people suck and are bad at things and the second law of thermodynamics and so forth. It isn't necessarily the same in other countries but banking, like many other industries, is increasingly global, and banking core systems are increasingly international. Nubank is clearly doing a LOT of things right- I saw a presentation in person from them in February and it blew my mind the level of capability and abstraction they were working at. They are a solid entity with a strong growth path. Cognitect, in contrast, is a tiny consulting firm. Maybe 50 employees? Technical consulting at scale is an incredibly hard business, particularly when your solution domain is limited to a particular toolchain. There was really no chance Cognitect was ever going to become Thoughtworks, or Deloitte, or anyone like that. That's an infinitely more fragile financial situation for Clojure than living under the roof of a business with a valuation in the billions. The way to think about this is that all technologies have a sponsor. Clojure moves from basically being sponsored by a guy in his backyard to, like PHP (Etsy has a market cap of around $10B and employs the PHP leader). That's huge. Beyond that, having what should become a more well known and reputable player in the financial industry backing it- you could well see A LOT MORE adoption from enterprises playing copycat. It's not going to happen right away, but it is a seminal step in COMPLETELY changing the enterprise adoption calculation. However, everything is a tradeoff. If you aren't working with Datomic, or in finance- this move is a stronger statement that maybe Clojure doesn't have the strongest future for you. It isn't going to become a lot of other things that it could become. The finance industry has a fondness for languages with weird syntax, and those languages often stay in the finance industry niche. That's probably where Clojure stays. There are all sorts of wicked cool JVM things like LMAX and Azul that are also financial industry specific, and Clojure and Datomic get to become one of those. Very successful, very cool, but niche. Anyway- hope that's helpful, happy to continue the conversation. Cheers.

latortuga 6y ago

Cognitect is not winding down Datomic, Datomic Cloud, or Datomic consulting, and they have big name customers including Facebook and Netflix.

dustingetz 6y ago

Nubank raised nearly a billion $ since 2018, hard to see that being bad in any possible way for Datomic to have access to those resources

juskrey 6y ago
That billion is not a charity, but comes with some people pursuing some things. Most of the time that "things" are to make a PR stunt, inflate and sell.