Today we bring Thomas Ballinger, a developer at Convex, an open-source backend for application builders. We will be discussing mainly databases, and why at Convex they use Rust and Typescript.
We'll also talk about systems scalability, infrastructure and go over different practices regarding abstractions
Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev
Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm
Convex: https://www.convex.dev/
Thomas' X/Twitter: https://x.com/ballingt
Thomas' Website: https://ballingt.com/
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:33 Thomas' background
02:29 Convex - what it is and why should you use it?
03:16 What are query planners?
06:32 SQL is a very high level language
07:43 The primary differentiator of Convex
10:49 Who are Convex's biggest competitors?
14:20 How do you build the infrastructure
17:11 What type of database is Convex?
19:18 Why is Convex written in Rust?
23:35 Cheap abstractions
25:47 Productivity suffering from compile times
29:47 The different approaches for a backend developer to build scalable systems
32:28 Backend for Frontend
37:21 You want to be close to your data
42:13 Are there plans to support other languages at Convex?
47:06 Does the schema update the autocompletion in the editor
48:31 Naming and behavior of the queries with Convex
51:06 Why sqlc is great
52:28 Why TypeScript is a great "shortcut" for Convex
59:34 Where to find Thomas
