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[Firebase founder] I no longer work at Firebase / Google, but two points: 1. There may be issues with the GCP integrations & UX/DX, but GCP integration is goo

by jamest 4y ago

[Firebase founder] I no longer work at Firebase / Google, but two points: 1. There may be issues with the GCP integrations & UX/DX, but GCP integration is good for many customers and necessary for the future of the business. One of the common failure modes for the 2011-2014 crop of Backend-as-a-Service offerings was their inability to technically support large customers. The economics of developer tooling are a super-power-law. So, if you hope to pay your employees you'll need to grow with your biggest customers. Eventually, as they become TheNextBigThing, your biggest customers end up wanting the bells and whistles that only a Big Cloud Platform provide. This was a part of the reason we chose to join Google, and why the Firebase team really really really pushed hard to integrate with GCP at a project, billing, and product level (philosophy: Firebase exposed the product from the client, GCP from the server) despite all the organizational/political overhead. 2. I'm excited to see the current crop of app platforms emerge. It has been 10 years since we launched (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832877) and there are now some great innovations in the space. I like the way Supabase (https://supabase.com/ https://supabase.com/) has exposed Postgres and InstantDB (https://www.instantdb.com https://www.instantdb.com) graphdb+realtime is really promising.

gedy 4y ago
Thanks James, I remember Firebase coming to Citrix in Santa Barbara to discuss being aquired. Wonder if you participated in those meetings? So glad they did not buy and ruin you! Ha
quickthrower2 4y ago
This is interesting, is this the fate of every upstart PaaS, to be acquired by an Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle etc. I see it might be necessary but also feels like a long con. You got popular because of not being the stuffy, complex, corporate thing. Then you slowly become one. This is why more and more I will err on the side of foss. I am investing my learning time into linux tools (bash and tmux for eg) even when using windows. Maybe even get back into vim. Because these tools will probably be the same after I die, or at least heavily backward compatible.
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  I have a very similar take (although I’ve been using Linux since it was distributed on floppies :), and I definitely prefer working with indies, but I will say that one of the things I really like about Supabase is that everything is available open source. So even if they are merged with one Borg or another, I would expect to have sufficient time to deploy my own infra if it looks like it’s all going to go pear shaped.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Yes Supabase seems like a good bet. Parse is a good comparison: if you relied on them you can now host it yourself.
- NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  Windows got in the way of my web development and I only learned that when I switched to Linux. Years later, I don't need Windows anymore and I'm so glad to escape that bloatware and spyware of an OS. Now I do gaming, video editing and programming all on Linux (ZorinOS) and it feels and looks so good.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Thank Valve for that. Ever since I’ve been able to play my entire Steam catalog on linux I’ve had absolutely no reason to use windows (or dual boot)
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Thanks to Proton game developers can ignore Linux exists, just let Valve do the needful.
      - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
        It inherently creates the need to make sure that the games can run on Linux, even if on a compatibility layer. This will only incentivize more people to try Linux and devs to create better tools and support systems. It's not the utopia we expect but it does get us close to it.
throwoutway 4y ago
Hi James. Thanks for commenting. Just wanted to let you know that your HN profile is outdated based on this comment. It says you are "Now leading product for Firebase at Google."
- jamest 4y ago
  Thanks, fixed!
solarkraft 4y ago
Wow, InstantDB's approach looks just about perfect. I hope somebody implements a FOSS version so it can take over the world.
- nezaj 4y ago
  Thanks! Fwiw, we do plan to open source in the future :) For now we want to iterate with a small group of users. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to hack with us.
wokwokwok 4y ago
While this seems reasonable, surely there’s a caveat here: If you have a successful popular product (firebase) and a not particularly successful or well loved product (GCP), does mixing A into B make sense? It might make technical sense to have the robust engineering capabilities of B to support A. …but if it’s driving customers away from A, because it’s starting to look like what they don’t like from B… All I can say is that there seems to be a lot of pressure for GCP to succeed, and I’m pretty skeptical that the changes to firebase are being made for the sake of making that product better. Betty had a bit of butter, but the butter was bitter, so she mixed the bitter butter with the better butter to make the bitter butter better but it made the better butter bitter…
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dcow 4y ago
  I didn't realize people didn't like GCP. What’s wrong with it? It’s far creamier than AWS in my experience.
  - js4ever 4y ago
    It's from Google, they deprecate things every 6 months including APIs your app is using, if you don't follow your app will be down pretty quickly. AWS nearly never do breaking changes.
    - darzu 4y ago
      AWS GameSparks. Being shut down end of November and bringing down one of my favorite games with it, because the devs were foolish enough to believe what you believe, that AWS sticks with its products.
      - opyate 4y ago
        Please provide a source. My internet sleuthing is failing me at the moment.
jensneuse 4y ago
I'm the founder of WunderGraph (https://wundergraph.com https://wundergraph.com) and I'd like to mention it as an open source alternative as well. What makes WunderGraph different is the focus on integrations. You can easily integrate internal and 3rd party APIs, and choose your own client. We generate code e.g. using swr, so you can build on top of existing ecosystems. We're also currently building a cloud version, which uses fly.io machines to be able to scale functions to zero and even run a SQLite database that can "sleep". I'd love to hear people's opinion. Here's a video of the cloud alpha that'll be launched soon: https://youtu.be/N8DFjh7FjLU https://youtu.be/N8DFjh7FjLU
quest88 4y ago
How did you overcome the organizational and political problems?

by jamest 4y ago

gedy 4y ago

Thanks James, I remember Firebase coming to Citrix in Santa Barbara to discuss being aquired. Wonder if you participated in those meetings? So glad they did not buy and ruin you! Ha

quickthrower2 4y ago

This is interesting, is this the fate of every upstart PaaS, to be acquired by an Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle etc. I see it might be necessary but also feels like a long con. You got popular because of not being the stuffy, complex, corporate thing. Then you slowly become one. This is why more and more I will err on the side of foss. I am investing my learning time into linux tools (bash and tmux for eg) even when using windows. Maybe even get back into vim. Because these tools will probably be the same after I die, or at least heavily backward compatible.

doctor_eval 4y ago
I have a very similar take (although I’ve been using Linux since it was distributed on floppies :), and I definitely prefer working with indies, but I will say that one of the things I really like about Supabase is that everything is available open source. So even if they are merged with one Borg or another, I would expect to have sufficient time to deploy my own infra if it looks like it’s all going to go pear shaped.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Yes Supabase seems like a good bet. Parse is a good comparison: if you relied on them you can now host it yourself.
NayamAmarshe 4y ago
Windows got in the way of my web development and I only learned that when I switched to Linux. Years later, I don't need Windows anymore and I'm so glad to escape that bloatware and spyware of an OS. Now I do gaming, video editing and programming all on Linux (ZorinOS) and it feels and looks so good.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Thank Valve for that. Ever since I’ve been able to play my entire Steam catalog on linux I’ve had absolutely no reason to use windows (or dual boot)
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Thanks to Proton game developers can ignore Linux exists, just let Valve do the needful.
    - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
      It inherently creates the need to make sure that the games can run on Linux, even if on a compatibility layer. This will only incentivize more people to try Linux and devs to create better tools and support systems. It's not the utopia we expect but it does get us close to it.

throwoutway 4y ago

Hi James. Thanks for commenting. Just wanted to let you know that your HN profile is outdated based on this comment. It says you are "Now leading product for Firebase at Google."

jamest 4y ago
Thanks, fixed!

solarkraft 4y ago

Wow, InstantDB's approach looks just about perfect. I hope somebody implements a FOSS version so it can take over the world.

nezaj 4y ago
Thanks! Fwiw, we do plan to open source in the future :) For now we want to iterate with a small group of users. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to hack with us.

wokwokwok 4y ago

While this seems reasonable, surely there’s a caveat here: If you have a successful popular product (firebase) and a not particularly successful or well loved product (GCP), does mixing A into B make sense? It might make technical sense to have the robust engineering capabilities of B to support A. …but if it’s driving customers away from A, because it’s starting to look like what they don’t like from B… All I can say is that there seems to be a lot of pressure for GCP to succeed, and I’m pretty skeptical that the changes to firebase are being made for the sake of making that product better. Betty had a bit of butter, but the butter was bitter, so she mixed the bitter butter with the better butter to make the bitter butter better but it made the better butter bitter…

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dcow 4y ago
I didn't realize people didn't like GCP. What’s wrong with it? It’s far creamier than AWS in my experience.
- js4ever 4y ago
  It's from Google, they deprecate things every 6 months including APIs your app is using, if you don't follow your app will be down pretty quickly. AWS nearly never do breaking changes.
  - darzu 4y ago
    AWS GameSparks. Being shut down end of November and bringing down one of my favorite games with it, because the devs were foolish enough to believe what you believe, that AWS sticks with its products.
    - opyate 4y ago
      Please provide a source. My internet sleuthing is failing me at the moment.

jensneuse 4y ago

I'm the founder of WunderGraph (https://wundergraph.com https://wundergraph.com) and I'd like to mention it as an open source alternative as well. What makes WunderGraph different is the focus on integrations. You can easily integrate internal and 3rd party APIs, and choose your own client. We generate code e.g. using swr, so you can build on top of existing ecosystems. We're also currently building a cloud version, which uses fly.io machines to be able to scale functions to zero and even run a SQLite database that can "sleep". I'd love to hear people's opinion. Here's a video of the cloud alpha that'll be launched soon: https://youtu.be/N8DFjh7FjLU https://youtu.be/N8DFjh7FjLU

quest88 4y ago

How did you overcome the organizational and political problems?