Friday, May 2, 2014

DataScript might be a great idea for Datomic

I was looking at DataScript, and the simple implementation gave me (I think) a lot of insight into Datomic.  If Tonsky's post is correct, and there is a core to Datomic that could be used as an in-memory Datomic-like thing, which could be used as easily as, say, core.logic, and that I could look under the hood to see how a simple case works, I would be in a much better place.  A big part of the problem is the catch-22 for learning datalog, easy to toy with, don't know where to go from there.

I'm not against spending money.  A few months back I went to an all-day Datomic class, and thought it well worth the $300 or so I spent on it.  I wouldn't be against talking people into paying for Datomic, but I'm not familiar with it to know when I should.  The main problem is that I haven't spent enough time playing with it to get a good feel for where it fits best.  Spinning up a separate server process just doesn't really work for that kind of playing.

Sort of like how I understood garbage collection, but once I implemented a toy lisp, I *got* it, and understood it's tradeoffs in a way I never had before.

I don't know what Datomic's sales numbers look like, but this seems like it would be a good strategy to increase interest/familiarity with the protocols and ideas involved, which would presumably increase the sales pipeline.