What do you think of the new HorizonJS by the RethinkDB team?
In case you don't know, HorizonJS is the new realtime JavaScript backend by the RethinkDB team. Although I haven't tried, it looks pretty interesting. Couple of concerns here :
Does the world need another realtime JS backend?
Will it be able to compete with Firebase?
How will it impact development of realtime apps that make use of SocketIO?
Products need competition. Parse was the only system I'd have considered "similar" to Firebase and with Parse as a service gone, regarding realtime databases, Firebase was all that's left. With this available, at least theres an option now.
Regarding SocketIO I don't think it impacts it at all. If you like using SocketIO, continue to use it. Firebase negates the need for that. If you like using Firebase - continue to use that.
I'm a big fan of Firebase but 1 major pain point of mine is the fact that it's a BaaS. I don't mind 3rd party services for non mission critical parts. If Mailgun or Cloudinary or Algolia go down for a bit of time, yeah - that sucks, but it's not gonna make my app come to a crashing halt. If Firebase goes down, if they decide to close the doors 1 day (like Parse did) - that will hurt me. They (Firebase) supposedly have some major announcements at Google IO this week. Will 1 of them be a self hosted system? I hope, but I doubt it.
If I can find some time to play with HorizonJS and it looks like it can ween me off of Firebase, I may just take the plunge. As of right now though, it doesn't look like their docs support AJS 1.x and I really don't have the time to rebuild in React or write my own connector.
Products need competition. Parse was the only system I'd have considered "similar" to Firebase and with Parse as a service gone, regarding realtime databases, Firebase was all that's left. With this available, at least theres an option now.
Regarding SocketIO I don't think it impacts it at all. If you like using SocketIO, continue to use it. Firebase negates the need for that. If you like using Firebase - continue to use that.
I'm a big fan of Firebase but 1 major pain point of mine is the fact that it's a BaaS. I don't mind 3rd party services for non mission critical parts. If Mailgun or Cloudinary or Algolia go down for a bit of time, yeah - that sucks, but it's not gonna make my app come to a crashing halt. If Firebase goes down, if they decide to close the doors 1 day (like Parse did) - that will hurt me. They (Firebase) supposedly have some major announcements at Google IO this week. Will 1 of them be a self hosted system? I hope, but I doubt it.
If I can find some time to play with HorizonJS and it looks like it can ween me off of Firebase, I may just take the plunge. As of right now though, it doesn't look like their docs support AJS 1.x and I really don't have the time to rebuild in React or write my own connector.