[HN Gopher] Your data model is your destiny
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Your data model is your destiny
Author : hunglee2
Score : 103 points
Date : 2025-10-14 19:27 UTC (2 days ago)
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| vipshek wrote:
| I don't have much to say about this post other than to vigorously
| agree!
|
| As an engineer who's full-stack and has frequently ended up doing
| product management, I think the main value I provide
| organizations is the ability to think holistically, from a
| product's core abstractions (the literal database schema), to how
| those are surfaced and interacted with by users, to how those are
| talked about by sales or marketing.
|
| Clear and consistent thinking across these dimensions is what
| makes some products "mysteriously" outperform others in the long
| run.
| mgh95 wrote:
| I really like this post. The only caveat I would add is it _is_
| possible to change your data model, but it requires constant and
| sustained high-effort work. It can pay off in spades, and it 's
| always preferable to get it right.
| munk-a wrote:
| I've lead a change like that - the very core of our data model
| was compromised from the early days of our company and we knew
| it... and knew it... and four years into working there I
| started a serious effort that ended up taking about a year and
| a half to pay off. These efforts always need a lot of careful
| planning and you usually want to work within the constraints of
| early model decisions as much as possible but it is quite
| possible to gracefully transition. When you're doing something
| like this it's important to be extremely greedy with SMEs to
| try and understand as much as you can about the field to future
| proof your new solution - our company did that once - there's
| not a chance it'd do it twice.
| Rendello wrote:
| I recently spent a week or so creating a library for my project.
| There's not a lot of code, but it was hard to reason about the
| data model, what I wanted the API to look like, and what I wanted
| actually rendered on the other side.
|
| I was proud after getting it working, but when I had to run
| dozens of files through it, it was horribly slow. I don't tend to
| write a lot of hot code, so I was excited by the fact I had to
| profile it and make it efficient.
|
| I decided that I should rewrite the system, as my mental model
| had improved and the code was doing a lot more than it should be
| doing for no reason. I've spent the last few days redesigning it
| according to Data-Oriented Design. I'm trying to get the wall-
| clock time down by more than an order of magnitude. I'm not sure
| how it's going to turn out, wish me luck :)
|
| Since I mentioned DoD, these three links will probably come up in
| conversation:
|
| Mike Acton's famous performance talk:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc
|
| DoD in the Zig compiler:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IroPQ150F6c
|
| The DoD book: https://dataorienteddesign.com/dodbook.pdf
| rvasa wrote:
| The value of data model in post is spot on. AI has the potential
| to offer a mapping from the old to ideal (materialising a view);
| potentially offering an evolutionary path out for the smarter
| orgs.
| dkarl wrote:
| This is an application of an engineering term to a product-level
| concept, but it fits. I guess you'd say "domain model" in
| product-speak, but to my engineering brain it doesn't evoke the
| cascading consequences of the model for the rest of the system.
| It's a rare product manager who treats the domain model as a
| consequential design product and a potential site of innovation.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| One nit, while I think Notion's data model is probably superior
| to that of Google Docs, I don't think their data model is what
| allowed them to succeed. Much stronger, I think, is their
| execution.
| ares623 wrote:
| I would think their data model choice _is_ part of the
| execution?
| 0xb0565e486 wrote:
| Isn't this more of a modal usage thing than the actual data
| model?
|
| Isn't the slack data model presented here totally possible with
| hipchats actual data model?
| treyd wrote:
| How it's presented in the UI is roughly a function of how the
| underlying data is structured and manipulated. You can put in a
| lot of effort and construct a different view on top of a data
| model that "wants to" be seen in a different way (Delta Chat
| being an example of this on top of email), sure. But it
| increases the complexity of the implementation and makes the
| abstraction thicker, making iteration harder and introducing
| space for users (and onboarding developers) to misunderstand
| how things _actually_ work.
| kristianc wrote:
| There's a term for this - inventing a new primitive. A primitive
| is a foundational abstraction that reframes how people understand
| and operate within a domain.
|
| A primitive lets you create a shared language and ritual
| ("tweet"), compound advantages with every feature built on top,
| and lock in switching costs without ever saying the quiet part
| out loud.
|
| The article is right that nearly every breakout startup manages
| to land a new one.
| nvdnadj92 wrote:
| Agree with the first half of the article, but every example the
| author pointed out predates AI. What are examples of companies
| that have been founded in the past 3 years and prove the authors
| point that the data model is the definitive edge?
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