Jamie Brandon

Tinkering with systems.

Currently working on storage and queries at TigerBeetle. Previously on incrementally maintained sql views at Materialize, in-database machine learning at RelationalAI, declarative languages for UI at LogicBlox and end-user programming and query languages at Eve, interspersed with myriad consulting gigs and regular bouts of independent research.

In Vancouver, BC.

Monthly devlog (follow via atom or email)

Highlights:

• Reflections on a decade of coding - what has and hasn't worked for me.
• Internal consistency - why most streaming systems can produce unboundedly wrong outputs.
• Against SQL - SQL is inexpressive, incompressible, non-porous and under-specified, and this creates drag on everything downstream.
• Have you tried rubbing a database on it? A day of lightning talks about turning a data-centric lens onto familiar problems to yield strange new solutions (and maybe exciting new problems).
• Pain we forgot - why teaching everyone to code is not enough.

Relational programming:

• droplet
  • ~2012
  • Goal: concisely specify distributed systems.
  • Conceived as a non-embedded version of bloom.
  • Didn't have the skills to complete it.
• eve
  • 2013 Dec - 2016 Jan (the others continued until 2018 Jan)
  • Goal: 'end-user programming'.
  • Shipped many demos
  • Lack of concrete questions/problems.
  • Plagued by performance problems.
• imp v0
  • 2015 Aug - 2016 Oct
  • Goal: Write a webapp end-to-end in a relational language.
  • A practical query compiler in 500 lines
  • Relational UI
• reltron
  • 2018 Aug - 2018 Dec
  • Goal: Can we find a graphical interface for exploring the relationships in a SQL database?
  • Collaboration with Kevin Lynagh
  • Writeup by Kevin
• imp v1
  • 2018 Apr - 2020 Mar
  • Goal: 'A better SQL' (see Against SQL)
  • Features:
    • Denotation + type system fit on a single page.
    • Compiles to relational algebra.
    • First-class/nested sets.
    • Functions are infinite sets, function application is a join.
    • Subqueries are a join against an anonymous function.
  • Core language
  • Denotational semantics
  • Types
  • Simple interpreter
  • Decorrelation
  • Solving functions
  • Boxes
• imp v2
  • 2020 May - 2022 Jan
  • Goal: Push v1 towards being a capable general-purpose language.
  • Same core language as v1, new runtime.
  • Improved type inference and error reporting.
  • First-class transactions.
  • Iteration
  • Implicit ordering in relational languages
  • Making live repls behave
  • Live repl demo
  • Heterogenous types and gradual typing
• imp v3 / preimp
  • 2022 Jun - 2022 Aug
  • Goal: Focus on the DX for state and UI.
  • The shape of data
  • Draft: The program is the database is the interface.
  • Dev teasers in 0022, 0025, 0026, 0027.
  • Abandoned to work on TigerBeetle.

Streaming/incremental systems:

• An opinionated map of incremental and streaming systems
• Internal consistency - why most streaming systems can produce unboundedly wrong outputs.
• Why query planning is hard
• Thoughts on benchmarking
• dida - differential dataflow for mere mortals
  • Why isn't differential dataflow more popular?
  • How dida works
  • Roughly works, but definitely not production-ready. Likely to be replaced by something simpler (eg).

SQL:

• Against SQL - SQL is inexpressive, incompressible, non-porous and under-specified, and this creates drag on everything downstream.
• How Materialize and other databases optimize SQL subqueries
• SELECT wat FROM sql

Interfaces:

• focus - a low-latency text editor which I use for all my writing and coding
  • Intro
  • Rendering
  • Text
• reltron - an interface for exploring relational databases, in collaboration with Kevin Lynagh
• monolog - monolog is to logging as spreadsheets are to accounting?
• unnamed - experimenting with VR game mechanics on the HTC Vive

Programming languages:

• Better operator precedence
• How safe is zig?
• Memory-mapped IO registers in zig
• Open multiple dispatch in zig
• Assorted thoughts on zig (and rust)
• blobs - a library for zero-copy deserialization in Julia
• Julia as a platform for language development
• Staged interpreters in rust
• Three months of rust
• strucjure - combining pattern matching, parsing and visitors
• Parallelizing the core.logic solver

Distributed systems:

• Causal ordering
• msc thesis - tweaking the timing model of a gossip algorithm to collapse the size of the state space and allow model checking fairness properties

Practices:

• Reflections on a decade of coding
  • On bad advice
  • Things unlearned
  • Emotional management
  • Setting goals
  • Speed matters
  • Moving faster
  • Coding
  • Testing
  • Writing
• Complexity budgets

Community:

• Have you tried rubbing a database on it? A day of lightning talks about turning a data-centric lens onto familiar problems to yield strange new solutions (and maybe exciting new problems).
  • Why start a new database conference?
  • HYTRADBOI 2022 postmortem

Rambling:

• What is a database?
• Small tech
• Frugality is non-linear
• Scaling down
• Imperative thinking and the making of sandwiches
• Pain we forgot - why teaching everyone to code is not enough.
• Local state is harmful

Cogsci:

• Quick and dirty review of Psychology of Programming Interest Group 1989-2015
• Contrast codes are an implementation detail
• Psychology vs the graphics pipeline
• Decision points and utility

Misc:

• Canada's Express Entry program
• Looking for debugger
• Looking for more debugger
• texsearch - a search index for the >8m LaTeX equations in the Springer corpus
• scampy - conversations between scammers and a very stupid chat bot