Prisma is removing Rust?

Summary

This video delves into Prisma's evolution, focusing on its transition from a Rust-based ORM to a TypeScript-based one. The speaker discusses how this shift makes Prisma more accessible for developers, particularly in terms of contributions and customization. Highlighting the ORM's performance, community engagement, and its commitment to transparency, the speaker shares excitement about Prisma’s future and the impact this change will have on TypeScript developers. The shift also promises improved performance while maintaining a focus on developer experience and collaboration.

Takeaways

• 😀 The Prisma ORM is moving its core logic from Rust to TypeScript to improve accessibility and collaboration within the TypeScript developer community.
• 😀 The decision to shift from Rust was driven by issues like technical debt, poor extensibility, and performance limitations that impacted the community’s ability to contribute.
• 😀 Prisma's vision includes prioritizing first-class support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite, while providing community support for other databases.
• 😀 Prisma is addressing its historical issues with open-source project management, such as an overwhelming backlog of open issues and unclear priorities.
• 😀 The ORM’s shift to TypeScript aims to make it more approachable for TypeScript developers, allowing them to easily contribute to and extend the codebase.
• 😀 The move away from Rust is expected to improve the performance of Prisma by making the codebase more efficient and reducing dependency on a single CPU thread for database connection management.
• 😀 Prisma is focusing on improving the predictability of its preview features, ensuring a smoother transition from early development to stable release.
• 😀 By consolidating all discussions and development on GitHub, Prisma is streamlining its community engagement, making it easier for developers to participate and track progress.
• 😀 Prisma is committed to regular community interactions, including monthly AMAs, to ensure transparent communication and community feedback.
• 😀 The speaker expresses respect for Prisma's team, acknowledging their openness to criticism and willingness to adapt and grow, ultimately strengthening the product and community.
• 😀 While excited for Prisma’s future with TypeScript, the speaker raises concerns that Rust-based rewrites of other tools in the web development ecosystem may face similar challenges in fostering community contributions due to language barriers.

Q & A

Why did Prisma originally use Rust for their ORM engine?

Prisma initially used Rust because of its performance benefits, which are critical for tasks like query parsing, validation, and execution. Rust allowed them to optimize for speed, but this approach created barriers to extensibility and limited community contributions.

What is the main reason Prisma is transitioning from Rust to TypeScript?

Prisma is transitioning to TypeScript to make the ORM more accessible and extensible for developers, particularly those familiar with TypeScript. This shift allows for easier community contributions, bug fixes, and feature extensions, which were difficult with the Rust engine.

How does the move to TypeScript benefit the Prisma community?

The move to TypeScript opens up the codebase to a wider community of developers who are more familiar with TypeScript than Rust. It simplifies contributions, making it easier for developers to extend and modify the ORM without needing deep knowledge of Rust.

What are the performance concerns with moving to TypeScript, and how does Prisma address them?

While TypeScript may not offer the same raw performance as Rust, Prisma believes that by redesigning their architecture, they can still achieve optimal performance. The focus will be on improving the overall system and making TypeScript efficient for the tasks Prisma handles.

How does Prisma plan to maintain its competitive edge despite the performance trade-offs with TypeScript?

Prisma plans to focus on architectural improvements and optimize TypeScript code to ensure that performance remains high. Additionally, Prisma continues to innovate by offering advanced features and better database support, which helps it stay competitive.

What is Prisma's strategy for supporting emerging databases like D1 and Turo?

Prisma is focusing on supporting emerging databases through community-driven extensions and custom adapters. This flexible approach allows Prisma to stay adaptable as new databases and technologies emerge.

Why is GitHub becoming the core platform for Prisma's open-source community?

GitHub is being centralized as the primary platform for all issues, contributions, and discussions to streamline communication and collaboration. By consolidating on GitHub, Prisma ensures a more organized and transparent process for developers to interact with the project.

What role will Discord play in Prisma's community engagement moving forward?

Discord will remain the platform for real-time discussions and informal communication among the Prisma community. While GitHub will handle the technical and issue-tracking side, Discord will support more immediate interactions and conversations.

What does Prisma mean by 'developer-first' and how does it relate to their guiding principles?

'Developer-first' refers to Prisma’s commitment to designing tools and workflows that prioritize the needs of developers. This principle is part of a broader focus on quality, transparency, collaboration, and continuous improvement, ensuring that the developer community is at the heart of their decisions.

How does Prisma handle community feedback and contributions?

Prisma is committed to actively engaging with its community by organizing issues, fixing bugs, and delivering preview features on GitHub. They also encourage community members to provide feedback through regular AMAs and by openly calling out the team when they fall short of expectations.