New, exciting tech making its way in to boring, old industries. And I mean boring, old industries.
There's an unbelievable amount of backwards business process that's still out there. Unless you've experienced it first hand, I really don't think you can fully appreciate how manual the "business world" still is.
For the past year I've been working with an intermodal trucking company building an app for owner-operator truck drivers so they can accept/reject deliveries, turn in paperwork, and update delivery statuses via a mobile app. If that sounds dead simple, it's because it is. But the change it brings is amazing.
While deploying the app I'd often ask when so-and-so truck driver came in to the office. The answer was usually something like "every day at 5:00pm to drop off his paperwork". A week after they start using the app, the answer suddenly turns in to "Oh, he never comes in to the office. You'll have to call his cell."
Dispatchers that were tearing their hair out trying to get updates from their drivers so they can in turn update their customers now feel like they can manage double the trucks. They're asking if they can get a similar app on their phone so they can manage their drivers on the go. Managers are asking when they'll be able to ditch the office space they're renting and let everyone work from home.
When I tell people "It's like Uber for intermodal trucking", nobody cares. If they pretend to care, I have to explain what intermodal trucking is in the first place -- then they stop pretending. It doesn't sound "sexy". It's a boring industry.
I think there's a lot of boring industry out there that hasn't fully embraced technology, and I think when it finally does we'll see a cultural change in the way we view work.
I'm interning at a law firm, two days ago I spent 4+ hours searching through public announcements on a government website. Me and a my colleague searched through the announcements of 500+ companies in the last 3 years. We ctrl+f'ed certain words, if they were present we noted the decision date, it was that simple. But the government website had a flashy UI with Ajax that required multiple clicks to get a list of announcements for a single year.
If the government had provided an API, the same task could be accomplished in a matter of minutes.
Likewise, most law offices have FileStore's or DMS's (Document Management System). These technologies are old and slow. If they used something like Algolia or Apache Lucene on a beefy server, the productivity would increase multiple-folds.
Another thing I want to mention is automated translation software. Most contracts we write are in dual languages. People usually slightly modify terms from earlier contracts. If there were a software that could identify identical/similar blocks and find their translation, the productivity increase would be substantial.
I wonder why these firms do not invest in IT. Being a corporate lawyer in 21st century is not that far away from being a coder. You primarily work with your computer, only instead of writing computer code, you write rules in natural languages. Programmers have IDEs, Lawyers still use MS Office products with lots of add-ons.
You've got a lot of competition. Transflo is the 800 pound gorilla in this space. But there are quite a few small providers working very hard to get into it.
And integration is the challenge. Integration into sometimes archaic dispatch systems . TMW Innovative is still an RPG green-screen system on IBM I Power systems and they have thousands of customers. They have a "web" version that is just a green screen scraper, which isn't bad, but is is slow.
All that to say this industry is ripe for innovation, especially for small carriers that have to implement elogs by December. It's an interesting year in trucking.
this. A company in my town has an RFID (active and passive) material tracking system for large construction projects that does some pretty cool stuff. Imagine having a $10b construction site, thousands of parts, materials, and pieces of equipment laying around in a stock yard, and being able to know where every single one is, know if someone takes the wrong part out of the yard, know if someone takes a part to an area of the jobsite it doesn't need to be in, etc... Snowfall covered your entire stock yard? no problem, still works.
Construction management is another similar field. People routinely have secretaries who print people's emails so they can write responses, or print drawings, Mark them up, then scan them back in. A YC startup net30.io is working on construction payment tracking.
This. There are so many "boring" companies out there that could become so much more competitive if they brought in a couple of full-stack devs to write a basic domain-specific CRUD monolith running on AWS hooked up to a basic mobile app.
I built exactly the same system just over 13 years ago. I'd love to be doing that now as the technology wasn't really there back then. GPRS and windows mobile was all there was.
You're right. It sounds boring but it was great fun!
I work in industrial data collection and communications. I'd caution that if you're going to go this route (introducing tech where there wasn't any), you need to focus on the low hanging fruit and solve actual pain points. I see a lot of companies pushing data collection without a use for the data or an understanding of the real problems companies need to solve. Sounds like the parent avoided these pitfalls.
My whole business is based on targeting older businesses. We've done some really simple CRUD apps with users for each employee for quite great margins. So much work to be done - just gotta meet enough businesses.
Can I ask what company you work for? Sounds like it's interesting work that's actually augmenting people's workflow to be both faster and easier. Seems like it's satisfying work.
Apple has solved few real world AR problems, which were usually hard for an average app developer to get started with. But with ARKit, apple, is "trying" to do the heavy lifting in terms of plane and object recognition etc.
Another thing is the platform of distribution. People will use AR apps, which will hit the app store after September like crazy. And these same people, will be primary audience for Apple headset.
It's like, before releasing headset, Apple is proving people that you really need a headset to overcome the pain of "continuously" moving your phone in the space.
Also, other OS and vendors will follow the trend and release AR compatible phones/hardware early. The only potential pitfall, I see is, battery usage. If it's properly optimised, I think a large AR wave on smartphones is about to hit.
Single row keyboard that has minimal finger movement. It was to be delivered March 2015 or so, but it has yet to be released. They have testers who rave about it and it looks incredible, but it is perpetually around the corner.
Originally designed as an ultra-portable phone keyboard, those who have used it tend to use it for all their machines. It has jump slots to quickly switch from device to device.
Much of what people have mentioned here will be really great. I think self-driving cars have the most potential to impact people lives day to day, followed by AR. I guess infinite, cheap, clean energy could also spark another industrial revolution.
But all these things aren't likely to impact the happiness and life satisfaction of those living in the developed world. The internet has been huge, but it really hasn't made us happier as a whole.
I would like to see someone create something that will make people's lives happier. That probably means doing something that will foster good human relationships and real world experiences.
I guess there's a lot of potential for driverless cars to help with that, but they could do the opposite as well. I think we need better tools for connecting with each other, understanding each other, forming social organizations and communities, and maybe changing the geography of cities to bring us closer together, rather than making it possible for us to be further apart. It's likely that new technology isn't needed, we just need to use what we already have in a new way.
We don't appear to be happier than any other animal. Even in the developed world plenty of people are downright miserable.
Unless primitive humans were just far sadder than the average animal, I can't see how technological advancement has made us happier as a whole, because we're not all that happy.
If antibiotics, electicity, and the steam engine didn't noticeably move the needle, it seems absurd to expect phone tech to do the deed. Whatever technology is solving "for the whole", it's not happiness.
I think one of the under reported aspects of self driving cars is what it might do for urban income inequality. The prices of cars and housing are two big things that keep poor people poor. If you can't afford the upfront or ongoing costs of a car, you need to live along mass transit lines to get to your job or endure a much longer commute which costs extra time and money. Housing along mass transit lines can be much more expensive that housing a good distance away.
Self driving cars can help this in two ways. First, the cost of transit should decrease. Human drivers will no longer be needed and the vehicles can be used more efficiently instead of sitting idle most of the day. Bus, Taxi, and ride-sharing costs should drop dramatically. Secondly commutes by car should become quicker and less of a burden for the driver. This should increase the "acceptable commute" radius for the average person. This adds choices in housing and more uniform demand that isn't as closely tied their proximity to urban areas, mass transit systems, and highways. The end result should hopefully be cheaper housing.
Although both of these have been around for a few years, we are yet to see a general adaptation of these. (might be due to inconsistent browser support).
Now with the rise of VR, 3d Printing, powerful GPUs these two technologies are bound to open new avenues of an immersive browsing experience. I imagine that in next few years we would have 1- Webs stores, that show a virtual 3d shopping mall, 2- 3-d virtual try out of garments, 3- VR coaching of physical activities like a- Playing Tennis, b- Judo, c-Taecondo, d- Dance
Fully & Quickly Reusable Rockets (refuel & refly, like jets)
Obviously both SpaceX and Blue Origin are the leaders here, but once they do it the other majors will either have to build the same thing or drop out of the industry.
There are so many things about space that we just assume are true, but are actually only true because access to orbit has always been so expensive. If we can get the cost to reach orbit down to a multiple of the fuel cost, then so many more things are possible.
We finally get large satellite constellations for low-latency Internet all over Earth. We get space stations and O'Neil cylinders. Moon bases and fuel depots on Titan.
At the same time, firms like Made In Space are working on in-space construction so you can build radio telescopes in space with arbitrarily large dishes (10 km, maybe?). Eventually we build mirrors that size too.
Basically just those two things are the only barriers between us and a solar-system-wide civilization like in The Expanse.
Arguably the third thing is ISRU (In-Space Resource Utilization), aka, mining asteroids for fuel and materials. But that's not immediately necessary and doesn't count as "around the corner".
RISC-V We should see the first hardware running a real Linux distro in 2018 and it should proliferate from there. RV32 should also start showing up in micro controllers as well.
Still need an open GPU, but I think a bunch of risc-v cores with vector extensions running LLVMpipe would be reasonable for running a Wayland desktop.
Mass adoption of electric vehicles. Battery prices are plummeting and the advantages of EV are so great that the moment they break that $20k barrier with zero subsidies (which should be within the next five years) the switch will be rapid. I suspect at least 1 in 3 personal vehicles in use in major metro areas will be an EV by 2025.
It aims for more economically secure public blockchains with shorter confirmation times and less cost (electricity/hardware/inflation). I haven't delved deep enough into it to be fully convinced, but what I've gotten through so far is promising. AFAIK its the only proof of stake algorithm thats been formally documented.
For me it is Raiden, I believe Ethereum should be able to beat Bitcoin in their lightening network implementation, and for the cryptocurrency of future, Raiden is very important for Ethereum.
PS: So you don't support Ethereum Classic anymore?
ARkit finally pushing AR to the masses. From a developer perspective, having an SDK that simplifies "environment detection/reasoning" is huge. Previously required pretty deep hardware requirements and now is turning into an AI/ML/software problem.
A usable AR SDK has been available from Qualcomm/Vuforia for years on more devices than ARKit supports. The only thing that came out of it was marketing gimmicks.
Crystal & Julia 1.0. Crystal because it's a blazing fast, compiled and statically typed version of Ruby (or 80% anyway), and it's web server is awesome. Now it just needs full concurrency.
Julia because it offers a nice, performant alternative to Python & R in data science, while avoiding Java & C++. It has some really nice features like multiple dispatch and the ability to run R, Python, Fortran and C code inside of it, so you can use libraries like Numpy in Julia.
If by "tech" you mean mostly computers and software, then WebAssembly is exciting. We've had 5 or more years now of companies inventing languages that compile back to Javascript, even though Javascript is a terrible target for compilation. WebAssembly was designed to be a true compilation target, and will allow an endless number of languages to be used on the browser.
WebAssembly helps create more space between the kind of languages that developers want to use, and any particular GUI output, such as HTML. In a different thread, I just wrote about what is wrong with HTML:
AR. Being able to superimpose software on top of real objects is amazing. It has so much economic potential that it hurts not being in the space already (working on that though). I feel AR will be the app craze 2.0.
Without doubt, GraphQL is the next technologo I will learn. The idea is so brillant compared to REST. If you are convinced by SQL and in general by Domain Specific Languages, I think you should give GraphQL a try.
I'm intrigued ... can you elaborate on the wow factor beyond REST that you see in GraphQL? When I looked at it in the past, it seems to make sense for things that could be represented by graph (e.g. FB's social graph), and graphql allowed you to run complex operations in the backend without fetching each individual node on the client. I clearly missed something?
I'm encouraged to hear your opinion on it. A friend of mine who turned me on to elixir is a fan of GraphQL as well. So you have pushed me to spend the day reading up on it and experimenting with it. Thank you.
I was really not sold by GraphQL, I'm totally down to not use REST as I think that's daft but GraphQL seems to be less powerful than SQL and only really useful if the thing you're querying really is a graph, and not lots of rows of relational data. I do work with data all the time so it's not actually that useful, I wish someone would invent something similar but with a more logical foundation (joins and aggregations and stuff, not only through ugly plugins). Maybe like datalog although I never learned that enough to find the payoffs.
I'm genuinely surprised by the number of people on HN who seem to know very little about what has been safe to call the successor to REST for quite some time.
Forgive me if this sounds hyperbolic, but unless you have unusual or strict requirements, building a new app in 2017 REST-first is most likely a terrible mistake.
Let me clear up some misconceptions I see in almost every HN comment thread on GraphQL:
1. GraphQL isn't more suited to Graph databases. Your data sources can be a mix of relational DB, NoSQL, key value, a REST API, or anything else.
2. n+1 has always been a solved problem in GraphQL thanks to DataLoader[1], a query batching utility which coalesces calls to your data sources from different parts of your app, specifically to avoid n+1.
3. It's unquestionably production-ready, battle-tested, has a real spec and official reference implementation, and it's probably the safest bet you can make at this moment in an industry as fickle as this.
With GraphQL you simply write your schema, define types and relationships, and you’re then able to request data in almost any shape you wish, with very little extra work. This is invaluable during development.
If you have a list of recent comments with author names, and later decide to show an avatar alongside the name, you don’t need to write any extra code on the server. You add an extra line to your query (or component’s fragment) on the client.
The same goes for any field, any relationship, no matter how complex the resulting shape. If you wanted a comment author’s follower’s comments’ likeCounts, you still don’t need to write another line of server code.
This makes it stupidly simple to rapidly prototype new features, try out new layouts, and means you can share a single API endpoint between mobile apps and desktop site without sending useless data to one or both.
There have been many occasions when we simply wouldn't have had the time to implement a feature correctly with REST, particularly when we might not even know what data we'll want until we begin developing the feature and get a feel for how it works.
It doesn't just save server dev time either. On the client side
there are libraries like Apollo[2] and Relay which take care of fetching data, caching, normalization, and you should almost certainly use one (I recommend Apollo) unless you have a good reason not to. Writing fetch calls and managing your store manually is just going to be a huge waste of time.
And the spec is more than queries and mutations. It's subscriptions, live queries, and more [3]. Real-time data is a first-class citizen of GraphQL, and the two most popular front-end libraries have official implementations of subscriptions (with live queries in progress).
GraphQL is elegant, has a well-designed official spec, great DX and just plain makes sense. But it's really something you need to try out for yourself (preferably on a real project) to see just how great it is.
If you’re planning to build something new with REST, seriously, reconsider. There's a slightly higher upfront cost to using GraphQL (particularly if you're new to it), but once you settle into it you'll be glad you did.
Useful tools and resources:
- GraphiQL[4] - an incredibly useful tool for running queries on your GraphQL API
- Graph.cool[5] - BaaS for quickly prototyping a GraphQL API
- Apollo Launchpad[6] - Try out GraphQL server code in your browser
I built a GraphQL API earlier this year. The learning curve can be a little awkward coming from REST, but once you get the hang of it GraphQL is super fun. Can't recommend it enough. Enjoy!
- an aggregation of everything I have to know to run a porcelain store in my country (taxes, suppliers, how to find staff or better yet: showing candidates directly, best location in my town, etc.)
- Fuzzy stuff like: the pic of that tree I took when I was on hollidays in XY a few years ago; or the note I took a few days ago about that band with some greek name
- a ready to paste, non-ancient js-script for XY
- a cafe where nobody cares about how long I sit with my laptop with a not too modern ambiente
[+] [-] nulagrithom|8 years ago|reply
There's an unbelievable amount of backwards business process that's still out there. Unless you've experienced it first hand, I really don't think you can fully appreciate how manual the "business world" still is.
For the past year I've been working with an intermodal trucking company building an app for owner-operator truck drivers so they can accept/reject deliveries, turn in paperwork, and update delivery statuses via a mobile app. If that sounds dead simple, it's because it is. But the change it brings is amazing.
While deploying the app I'd often ask when so-and-so truck driver came in to the office. The answer was usually something like "every day at 5:00pm to drop off his paperwork". A week after they start using the app, the answer suddenly turns in to "Oh, he never comes in to the office. You'll have to call his cell."
Dispatchers that were tearing their hair out trying to get updates from their drivers so they can in turn update their customers now feel like they can manage double the trucks. They're asking if they can get a similar app on their phone so they can manage their drivers on the go. Managers are asking when they'll be able to ditch the office space they're renting and let everyone work from home.
When I tell people "It's like Uber for intermodal trucking", nobody cares. If they pretend to care, I have to explain what intermodal trucking is in the first place -- then they stop pretending. It doesn't sound "sexy". It's a boring industry.
I think there's a lot of boring industry out there that hasn't fully embraced technology, and I think when it finally does we'll see a cultural change in the way we view work.
[+] [-] terminalcommand|8 years ago|reply
If the government had provided an API, the same task could be accomplished in a matter of minutes.
Likewise, most law offices have FileStore's or DMS's (Document Management System). These technologies are old and slow. If they used something like Algolia or Apache Lucene on a beefy server, the productivity would increase multiple-folds.
Another thing I want to mention is automated translation software. Most contracts we write are in dual languages. People usually slightly modify terms from earlier contracts. If there were a software that could identify identical/similar blocks and find their translation, the productivity increase would be substantial.
I wonder why these firms do not invest in IT. Being a corporate lawyer in 21st century is not that far away from being a coder. You primarily work with your computer, only instead of writing computer code, you write rules in natural languages. Programmers have IDEs, Lawyers still use MS Office products with lots of add-ons.
[+] [-] jenkstom|8 years ago|reply
And integration is the challenge. Integration into sometimes archaic dispatch systems . TMW Innovative is still an RPG green-screen system on IBM I Power systems and they have thousands of customers. They have a "web" version that is just a green screen scraper, which isn't bad, but is is slow.
All that to say this industry is ripe for innovation, especially for small carriers that have to implement elogs by December. It's an interesting year in trucking.
[+] [-] jdc0589|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cerium|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solatic|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjsuk|8 years ago|reply
You're right. It sounds boring but it was great fun!
[+] [-] caseymarquis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devdad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KurtMueller|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] NovaX|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Im_a_throw_away|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allpratik|8 years ago|reply
Apple has solved few real world AR problems, which were usually hard for an average app developer to get started with. But with ARKit, apple, is "trying" to do the heavy lifting in terms of plane and object recognition etc.
Another thing is the platform of distribution. People will use AR apps, which will hit the app store after September like crazy. And these same people, will be primary audience for Apple headset.
It's like, before releasing headset, Apple is proving people that you really need a headset to overcome the pain of "continuously" moving your phone in the space.
Also, other OS and vendors will follow the trend and release AR compatible phones/hardware early. The only potential pitfall, I see is, battery usage. If it's properly optimised, I think a large AR wave on smartphones is about to hit.
Just my 2 cents!
[+] [-] jostylr|8 years ago|reply
Single row keyboard that has minimal finger movement. It was to be delivered March 2015 or so, but it has yet to be released. They have testers who rave about it and it looks incredible, but it is perpetually around the corner.
Originally designed as an ultra-portable phone keyboard, those who have used it tend to use it for all their machines. It has jump slots to quickly switch from device to device.
[+] [-] ProfessorLayton|8 years ago|reply
I don't know if its around the corner, but considering the human genome was completed circa 2003, I'm pretty enthusiastic that it isn't too far away.
[+] [-] baron816|8 years ago|reply
But all these things aren't likely to impact the happiness and life satisfaction of those living in the developed world. The internet has been huge, but it really hasn't made us happier as a whole.
I would like to see someone create something that will make people's lives happier. That probably means doing something that will foster good human relationships and real world experiences.
I guess there's a lot of potential for driverless cars to help with that, but they could do the opposite as well. I think we need better tools for connecting with each other, understanding each other, forming social organizations and communities, and maybe changing the geography of cities to bring us closer together, rather than making it possible for us to be further apart. It's likely that new technology isn't needed, we just need to use what we already have in a new way.
[+] [-] Trundle|8 years ago|reply
Serious question. Has any technology done this?
We don't appear to be happier than any other animal. Even in the developed world plenty of people are downright miserable.
Unless primitive humans were just far sadder than the average animal, I can't see how technological advancement has made us happier as a whole, because we're not all that happy.
If antibiotics, electicity, and the steam engine didn't noticeably move the needle, it seems absurd to expect phone tech to do the deed. Whatever technology is solving "for the whole", it's not happiness.
[+] [-] slg|8 years ago|reply
Self driving cars can help this in two ways. First, the cost of transit should decrease. Human drivers will no longer be needed and the vehicles can be used more efficiently instead of sitting idle most of the day. Bus, Taxi, and ride-sharing costs should drop dramatically. Secondly commutes by car should become quicker and less of a burden for the driver. This should increase the "acceptable commute" radius for the average person. This adds choices in housing and more uniform demand that isn't as closely tied their proximity to urban areas, mass transit systems, and highways. The end result should hopefully be cheaper housing.
[+] [-] subhrm|8 years ago|reply
Although both of these have been around for a few years, we are yet to see a general adaptation of these. (might be due to inconsistent browser support).
Now with the rise of VR, 3d Printing, powerful GPUs these two technologies are bound to open new avenues of an immersive browsing experience. I imagine that in next few years we would have 1- Webs stores, that show a virtual 3d shopping mall, 2- 3-d virtual try out of garments, 3- VR coaching of physical activities like a- Playing Tennis, b- Judo, c-Taecondo, d- Dance
[+] [-] bmcusick|8 years ago|reply
Obviously both SpaceX and Blue Origin are the leaders here, but once they do it the other majors will either have to build the same thing or drop out of the industry.
There are so many things about space that we just assume are true, but are actually only true because access to orbit has always been so expensive. If we can get the cost to reach orbit down to a multiple of the fuel cost, then so many more things are possible.
We finally get large satellite constellations for low-latency Internet all over Earth. We get space stations and O'Neil cylinders. Moon bases and fuel depots on Titan.
At the same time, firms like Made In Space are working on in-space construction so you can build radio telescopes in space with arbitrarily large dishes (10 km, maybe?). Eventually we build mirrors that size too.
Basically just those two things are the only barriers between us and a solar-system-wide civilization like in The Expanse.
[+] [-] bmcusick|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phkahler|8 years ago|reply
Still need an open GPU, but I think a bunch of risc-v cores with vector extensions running LLVMpipe would be reasonable for running a Wayland desktop.
[+] [-] aphextron|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aakilfernandes|8 years ago|reply
https://github.com/ethereum/research/blob/master/casper4/pap...
It aims for more economically secure public blockchains with shorter confirmation times and less cost (electricity/hardware/inflation). I haven't delved deep enough into it to be fully convinced, but what I've gotten through so far is promising. AFAIK its the only proof of stake algorithm thats been formally documented.
[+] [-] splintercell|8 years ago|reply
PS: So you don't support Ethereum Classic anymore?
[+] [-] miheermunjal|8 years ago|reply
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/arkit/building_a_b...
[+] [-] lern_too_spel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfusion|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goatlover|8 years ago|reply
Julia because it offers a nice, performant alternative to Python & R in data science, while avoiding Java & C++. It has some really nice features like multiple dispatch and the ability to run R, Python, Fortran and C code inside of it, so you can use libraries like Numpy in Julia.
[+] [-] lkrubner|8 years ago|reply
WebAssembly helps create more space between the kind of languages that developers want to use, and any particular GUI output, such as HTML. In a different thread, I just wrote about what is wrong with HTML:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14926845
If by "tech" you don't mean computers/software, then CRSPR is clearly going to be a huge thing going forward.
[+] [-] pryelluw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egypturnash|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] green7ea|8 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/mirasol.html
[+] [-] marcosdumay|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlboss|8 years ago|reply
GAN is a type of Deep Learning Network which can generate data after training.
Applications
- Text to image synthesis (Scripts to Movie ?) (https://github.com/reedscot/icml2016)
- Generation of Game Environments
- Image to Image conversion (https://github.com/junyanz/CycleGAN)
- 2d to 3d conversion
I think in future we will have highly creative deep learning systems, which will make ar/vr/movie/game creation faster and cheaper.
[+] [-] amirouche|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tostitos1979|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krono|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] X86BSD|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zimablue|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottmf|8 years ago|reply
Forgive me if this sounds hyperbolic, but unless you have unusual or strict requirements, building a new app in 2017 REST-first is most likely a terrible mistake.
Let me clear up some misconceptions I see in almost every HN comment thread on GraphQL:
1. GraphQL isn't more suited to Graph databases. Your data sources can be a mix of relational DB, NoSQL, key value, a REST API, or anything else.
2. n+1 has always been a solved problem in GraphQL thanks to DataLoader[1], a query batching utility which coalesces calls to your data sources from different parts of your app, specifically to avoid n+1.
3. It's unquestionably production-ready, battle-tested, has a real spec and official reference implementation, and it's probably the safest bet you can make at this moment in an industry as fickle as this.
With GraphQL you simply write your schema, define types and relationships, and you’re then able to request data in almost any shape you wish, with very little extra work. This is invaluable during development.
If you have a list of recent comments with author names, and later decide to show an avatar alongside the name, you don’t need to write any extra code on the server. You add an extra line to your query (or component’s fragment) on the client.
The same goes for any field, any relationship, no matter how complex the resulting shape. If you wanted a comment author’s follower’s comments’ likeCounts, you still don’t need to write another line of server code.
This makes it stupidly simple to rapidly prototype new features, try out new layouts, and means you can share a single API endpoint between mobile apps and desktop site without sending useless data to one or both.
There have been many occasions when we simply wouldn't have had the time to implement a feature correctly with REST, particularly when we might not even know what data we'll want until we begin developing the feature and get a feel for how it works.
It doesn't just save server dev time either. On the client side there are libraries like Apollo[2] and Relay which take care of fetching data, caching, normalization, and you should almost certainly use one (I recommend Apollo) unless you have a good reason not to. Writing fetch calls and managing your store manually is just going to be a huge waste of time.
And the spec is more than queries and mutations. It's subscriptions, live queries, and more [3]. Real-time data is a first-class citizen of GraphQL, and the two most popular front-end libraries have official implementations of subscriptions (with live queries in progress).
GraphQL is elegant, has a well-designed official spec, great DX and just plain makes sense. But it's really something you need to try out for yourself (preferably on a real project) to see just how great it is.
If you’re planning to build something new with REST, seriously, reconsider. There's a slightly higher upfront cost to using GraphQL (particularly if you're new to it), but once you settle into it you'll be glad you did.
Useful tools and resources:
- GraphiQL[4] - an incredibly useful tool for running queries on your GraphQL API
- Graph.cool[5] - BaaS for quickly prototyping a GraphQL API
- Apollo Launchpad[6] - Try out GraphQL server code in your browser
[1] https://github.com/facebook/dataloader
[2] https://github.com/apollographql/apollo-client
[3] https://dev-blog.apollodata.com/new-features-in-graphql-batc...
[4] https://github.com/graphql/graphiql
[5] https://www.graph.cool
[6] http://launchpad.graphql.com
[+] [-] transcranial|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thisisforyou|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp527|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
Automatic language translation everywhere.
Big Brother everywhere. (Excited about, yes; happy about, no.)
Batteries + solar as the predominant energy source.
Electric cars getting some real market share.
[+] [-] GigabyteCoin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mabbo|8 years ago|reply
Those video by Cruise (GM owned) make me think they are here now. We're just waiting on laws to catch up.
[+] [-] anotheryou|8 years ago|reply
Find me:
- an aggregation of everything I have to know to run a porcelain store in my country (taxes, suppliers, how to find staff or better yet: showing candidates directly, best location in my town, etc.)
- Fuzzy stuff like: the pic of that tree I took when I was on hollidays in XY a few years ago; or the note I took a few days ago about that band with some greek name
- a ready to paste, non-ancient js-script for XY
- a cafe where nobody cares about how long I sit with my laptop with a not too modern ambiente
- the lesser known types optical illusions