5 ms·

PSA: Stop starting startups on Firestore

8 points by rbnsl 3y ago

whatsthenews 3y ago
good article, enjoyed the little storytelling even if a bit distracting. i think most folks on here are going to be super critical about them starting on a NoSQL database in the first place when it was very likely that relational would have been the way to go from the start, but sometimes you just need to get something off the ground and Firestore can be the fastest to do so (not recommending fwiw). we were also one of those “thousands” of startups that started with it and migrated off after a few years too - so might be a bit biased there - but it all worked out in the end
- zerodayz 3y ago
  lol I agree re:storytelling - thought it was a nice touch. gave the article a bit of flair that was more interesting to read than many eng blog posts that can be otherwise pretty dry
lumos 3y ago
Document dbs, like crypto cycles, keep coming in and out of the zeitgeist...why? I just don't understand how purportedly smart engineers keep falling for the same traps over and over
- whatsthenews 3y ago
  mistakes will always be made at all stages, imo the key differentiator is how quickly they course correct and iterate
  - morenomdz 2y ago
    It is not a mistake when it is a decision made after a well-thought tradeoff evaluation.
- i_rush_carriers 3y ago
  That’s offensive to the innovation happening in crypto to be honest, compared to the lack of it in the non-relational database world
  - useRust 2y ago
    What is even left to innovate in document databases? They do a very specific thing well; it's not their fault naive engineers keep trying to use them in ways they are not intended to be used
protus 3y ago
Not sure if this company also ran into this issue, but the engineers at my startup absolutely hated the Firebase UI for querying. Genuinely could not fathom how product designers could put together such a poor experience. Needless to say we did our own migration after 1 year to MySQL after
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bertgodel 3y ago
This reminds me of that April Fools tweet on Google sunsetting Firebase that I fell for lol https://x.com/tweetsofsumit/status/1774849820353548413?s=46 https://x.com/tweetsofsumit/status/1774849820353548413?s=46
- lumos 2y ago
  lol this would actually happen tho
zerodayz 3y ago
if everyone committed to using tried-and-tested things that have worked for half a century we wouldn’t need to waste so many man hours on these types of tasks
gavin_ 2y ago
Pretty incredible how Postgres has gotten so dominant in eng mindshare over the last 5-8 years. Especially with super popular tools like Supabase now being built just on top of Postgres; feel like every company I see is on it
dappergenius 2y ago
Tech startup with very relational data picks hyped up non-relational database and regrets decision later… classic

8 points by rbnsl 3y ago

good article, enjoyed the little storytelling even if a bit distracting. i think most folks on here are going to be super critical about them starting on a NoSQL database in the first place when it was very likely that relational would have been the way to go from the start, but sometimes you just need to get something off the ground and Firestore can be the fastest to do so (not recommending fwiw). we were also one of those “thousands” of startups that started with it and migrated off after a few years too - so might be a bit biased there - but it all worked out in the end

zerodayz 3y ago
lol I agree re:storytelling - thought it was a nice touch. gave the article a bit of flair that was more interesting to read than many eng blog posts that can be otherwise pretty dry

lumos 3y ago

Document dbs, like crypto cycles, keep coming in and out of the zeitgeist...why? I just don't understand how purportedly smart engineers keep falling for the same traps over and over

whatsthenews 3y ago
mistakes will always be made at all stages, imo the key differentiator is how quickly they course correct and iterate
- morenomdz 2y ago
  It is not a mistake when it is a decision made after a well-thought tradeoff evaluation.
i_rush_carriers 3y ago
That’s offensive to the innovation happening in crypto to be honest, compared to the lack of it in the non-relational database world
- useRust 2y ago
  What is even left to innovate in document databases? They do a very specific thing well; it's not their fault naive engineers keep trying to use them in ways they are not intended to be used

protus 3y ago

Not sure if this company also ran into this issue, but the engineers at my startup absolutely hated the Firebase UI for querying. Genuinely could not fathom how product designers could put together such a poor experience. Needless to say we did our own migration after 1 year to MySQL after

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bertgodel 3y ago

This reminds me of that April Fools tweet on Google sunsetting Firebase that I fell for lol https://x.com/tweetsofsumit/status/1774849820353548413?s=46 https://x.com/tweetsofsumit/status/1774849820353548413?s=46

lumos 2y ago
lol this would actually happen tho

zerodayz 3y ago

if everyone committed to using tried-and-tested things that have worked for half a century we wouldn’t need to waste so many man hours on these types of tasks

gavin_ 2y ago

Pretty incredible how Postgres has gotten so dominant in eng mindshare over the last 5-8 years. Especially with super popular tools like Supabase now being built just on top of Postgres; feel like every company I see is on it

dappergenius 2y ago

Tech startup with very relational data picks hyped up non-relational database and regrets decision later… classic