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That all may be true for the actual implementation, but the idea of the ability to write an application with a built-in relational database that would be availa

That all may be true for the actual implementation, but the idea of the ability to write an application with a built-in relational database that would be available to all my users relatively instantly is still a great idea, and the closest thing we get to that today is the web, but the web comes with it's own whole thing, least of which being a dev stack with so many moving parts by comparison.

rbanffy 3y ago
You don't need to build on Kubernetes when an ECS cluster and an RDS instance will do the job. It is possible to build simple things in the cloud.
- eddieroger 3y ago
  I'm not saying a full k8s stack, but consider mobile apps - you can't control when your user will update, if they do at all. So you either have to have a very rigid data model that makes a lot of translations and such on the backend, or a hook to check for updates and pester the user, or just ship late in pursuit of perfection. Plus now you get to deal with the entire Internet and cell networks and VPNs and bad actors.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    > you can't control when your user will update, if they do at all If you design your APIs to be versioned from the start, you don't need to be overly concerned with that. Also, if maintaining a deprecated API is too resource-consuming (either developers or API translation logic) you can always make it return a message informing the user the said API will cease to function on a given date (you need to make the app display that, even if not updated) and shut it down after that. Any mobile app should have a way to be placed in degraded functionality mode for a number of reasons, API deprecation being just one of them.
mohaine 3y ago
On an AS400 you wouldn't even get a dev stack. Well, unless you wanted to pay IBM for 2 of them. Dev on production is the name of the game for most AS400 shops.
- sgt 3y ago
  So AS400 developers would chronically be deploying at night? Code during the day and deploy/fix/hack at night? Actually, that sounds familiar.
  - bluepizza 3y ago
    Yes - we had a night shift from 00:00 to 08:00 that was oddly popular.
    - rbanffy 3y ago
      Computers are much faster when the batch jobs finish running and there are no interactive users logged in.
      - crest 3y ago
        I guess it depends on how long the batch jobs run and how much they impact interactive use compared to the normal dayshift workload.
        bluepizza 3y ago
        They usually lock the database completely, so you have to time your work around them.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
Deno has a built-in KV store, but one could argue it belongs to the web ecosystem.
marcosdumay 3y ago
There were so many attempts to create something similar but modern that it isn't even funny. WinFS was first announced to be released in 1993, and the last I saw it was announced in Windows 8. This was one of the core ideas of BeOS, AFAIK they never really did give-up on it, just de-prioritized. The KDE people played with it at least twice... It never works. There are insurmountable problems you notice once you try to design such a system. And yeah, AS/400 is an example of it not working too, as it was only usable as a hidden database layer and never survived contact with the users. On the other hand, the obvious extension of the concept into development tools is a great idea that has been used to create novice-friendly toolsets all over. The tools always seem to "mature" away from it for some reason, and usually lose popularity on the process.

rbanffy 3y ago

You don't need to build on Kubernetes when an ECS cluster and an RDS instance will do the job. It is possible to build simple things in the cloud.

eddieroger 3y ago
I'm not saying a full k8s stack, but consider mobile apps - you can't control when your user will update, if they do at all. So you either have to have a very rigid data model that makes a lot of translations and such on the backend, or a hook to check for updates and pester the user, or just ship late in pursuit of perfection. Plus now you get to deal with the entire Internet and cell networks and VPNs and bad actors.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  > you can't control when your user will update, if they do at all If you design your APIs to be versioned from the start, you don't need to be overly concerned with that. Also, if maintaining a deprecated API is too resource-consuming (either developers or API translation logic) you can always make it return a message informing the user the said API will cease to function on a given date (you need to make the app display that, even if not updated) and shut it down after that. Any mobile app should have a way to be placed in degraded functionality mode for a number of reasons, API deprecation being just one of them.

mohaine 3y ago

On an AS400 you wouldn't even get a dev stack. Well, unless you wanted to pay IBM for 2 of them. Dev on production is the name of the game for most AS400 shops.

sgt 3y ago
So AS400 developers would chronically be deploying at night? Code during the day and deploy/fix/hack at night? Actually, that sounds familiar.
- bluepizza 3y ago
  Yes - we had a night shift from 00:00 to 08:00 that was oddly popular.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    Computers are much faster when the batch jobs finish running and there are no interactive users logged in.
    - crest 3y ago
      I guess it depends on how long the batch jobs run and how much they impact interactive use compared to the normal dayshift workload.
      - bluepizza 3y ago
        They usually lock the database completely, so you have to time your work around them.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago

Deno has a built-in KV store, but one could argue it belongs to the web ecosystem.

marcosdumay 3y ago

There were so many attempts to create something similar but modern that it isn't even funny. WinFS was first announced to be released in 1993, and the last I saw it was announced in Windows 8. This was one of the core ideas of BeOS, AFAIK they never really did give-up on it, just de-prioritized. The KDE people played with it at least twice... It never works. There are insurmountable problems you notice once you try to design such a system. And yeah, AS/400 is an example of it not working too, as it was only usable as a hidden database layer and never survived contact with the users. On the other hand, the obvious extension of the concept into development tools is a great idea that has been used to create novice-friendly toolsets all over. The tools always seem to "mature" away from it for some reason, and usually lose popularity on the process.