3 ms·
> I’d rather be on the hook for a modern RDBMS than a modern browser. I've worked on both a RDBMS and a browser, and yes, I'm inclined to agree. In particular,
by Sesse__ 3y ago
> I’d rather be on the hook for a modern RDBMS than a modern browser.
I've worked on both a RDBMS and a browser, and yes, I'm inclined to agree. In particular, it is largely acceptable for an RDBMS to pick a niche where you perform well, and do worse in others—and you're (silently) allowed to support only a given subset and have your own incompatibilities. Nobody would ever use a browser that performs well on NYT but could hardly run YouTube (or the other way around).
Interestingly, there are very small teams who have written usable instances of both.
- benreesman 3y agoIt’s quite a career that includes both! Congratulations on an interesting professional life! Are you at liberty to share any inside baseball about the small teams you mentioned?
- Sesse__ 3y agoI haven't been part of a small team building either, but the obvious small team doing RDBMSes is SQLite. Three people building the world's most popular software, and possibly the world's most robust database. They found a niche and implemented it perfectly. For browsers, the most prominent example is probably LibWeb/Ladybird, part of SerenityOS (but with a Qt port, allowing it to run on other operating systems). I've never tried it myself, but supposedly it's complete enough to run large web applications fairly acceptably, which is amazing for something developed largely by basically two people AIUI.