Top all-time · #393
DoltHub
Company blog · dolthub.com/blogdataprogramming
DoltHub is the company blog at dolthub.com, writing about data and programming. Since 2019, 137 different Hacker News readers have linked it 429 times, most often “Dolt Is Git for Data”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 0 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Linked by HN readers as references on Dolt, a version-controlled SQL database: its prolly-tree storage design, data bounties and hospital price datasets. Comments cite the posts as sources rather than praise the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
DoltHub is where people collaboratively build, manage, and distribute Dolt databases. Dolt is the world's first and only version controlled database, think Git and MySQL had a baby.
Most-linked posts?
- Dolt Is Git for Data25 people · 33 mentions · first linked 2019-05-29
- How Dolt stores table data7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-04-01
- SwissMap: A smaller, faster Golang Hash Table6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-03-29
- We tried Go's experimental Green Tea garbage collector: didn't help performance4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-09-29
- Are Go Generics Simple or Incomplete? A Design Study3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-11-22
- Dolt is Git for data3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-03-30
- /3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-04-28
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-02-20
- The 4-chan Go programmer3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-08-24
- Avoiding Pitfalls in Go3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-08-17
What Hacker News says?
Also, Learned Indexes Structures: The Case for Learned Index Structures: https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01208 Learned Indexes for a Google-scale Disk-based Database: https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.12501 And Noms/Dolt Prolly Trees: How to Chunk Your Database into a Merkle Tree: https://dolthub.com/blog/2022-06-27-prolly-chunker/
Comment linking /blog/2022-06-27-prolly-chunker/
on “Ask HN: What are some cool but obscure data structures you know about?”Submitted Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices as a story · 901 points
HN discussionThe application backing use case is best suited for when you have parts of your database that get updated periodically and need human review. So you have a production database that you serve to your customers. Then you have a branch / fork of that (dev) that your development team adds batches of products to. Once a week you do a data release: submit a PR from dev -> prod, have somebody review all the new copy, and m…
Comment linking /blog/2020-03-30-dolt-use-cases/
on “Dolt is Git for Data: a SQL database that you can fork, clone, branch, merge”Submitted I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to as a story · 592 points
HN discussion> Somebody always wants to undelete something > or examine it to see why it was deleted > or see who changed something, or blah blah blah People for whom this resonates should look into Dolt: https://dolthub.com/ . It's a mysql-compat database that is versioned and forkable - basically imagine git and mysql had a baby. Every transaction creates an entry in the commit log that lets you see when, how, and why the data…
Comment linking /
on “Soft deletion probably isn't worth it”Submitted Dolt is Git for data as a story · 358 points
HN discussionSkimming through this guide: https://dolthub.com/blog/2021-11-15-zsh-completions-with-sub... it seems to be a lot more convoluted than I thought. Really, every external CLI binary that supports completions has this autocomplete script? I thought zsh parsed man pages to get available options/subcommands.
Comment linking /blog/2021-11-15-zsh-completions-with-subcommands/
on “Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?”Submitted The 4-chan Go programmer as a story · 288 points
HN discussionGood point. With the data as sparse and dirty as it is, it's hard to get a reliable analysis for specific procedures. Or at least one I consider publishable. That, plus, I don't have a good understanding of how medical billing works on the inside. Some of that will hopefully change in the coming months as new data comes in (will write more about that in another blog.) If you want to look at how prices for different…
Comment linking /blog/2022-05-06-the-most-expensive-hospitals/
on “I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to”Submitted People Keep Inventing Prolly Trees as a story · 191 points
HN discussionYou can do historical queries two different ways: 1) `SELECT * FROM state_populations AS OF 'master'` to get the repo as it existed at a particular timestamp / ref name 2) `SELECT * FROM dolt_diff_state_populations WHERE ...` to examine to/from column value pairs between any two commits you choose. There are a bunch of different supported system tables that provide interesting functionality: https://www.dolthub.com/…
Comment linking /docs/reference/sql/
on “Recently minted database technologies that I find intriguing”Submitted Go: Sentinel errors and errors.Is() slow your code down by 3000% as a story · 183 points
HN discussionWe're running a $10,000 bounty to assemble this information into a queryable database: https://www.dolthub.com/repositories/dolthub/hospital-price-... You get paid based on the percentage of rows you contribute to the dataset. So if you fill in 20% of the rows, you get $2,000. More details here: https://dolthub.awsdev.ld-corp.com/blog/2021-01-14-hopsital-...
Comment linking /repositories/dolthub/hospital-price-transparency/bounties/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001
on “Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies”Submitted Anatomy of a SQL Engine as a story · 168 points
HN discussionAs you have noticed, "Github for Data" is not what they're building. At all. Our company is actually building Git for Data and Github for Data. We have an open source database called Dolt which combines the commit graph of git with the relational tables and SQL of MySQL: https://github.com/liquidata-inc/dolt/ Then we have a DoltHub, which is Github for data: https://www.dolthub.com/ Dolt lets you version, branch, an…
Comment linking /
on “A group of ex-NSA and Amazon engineers are building a ‘GitHub for data’”Submitted Three ways to think about Go channels as a story · 162 points
HN discussionhttps://www.dolthub.com/docs/getting-started/introduction/ This is the correct link
Comment linking /docs/getting-started/introduction/
on “A group of ex-NSA and Amazon engineers are building a ‘GitHub for data’”Submitted US Presidential Election $25k Database Bounty Review as a story · 145 points
HN discussionWhen I read the headlines, I thought it was these guys: https://www.dolthub.com
Comment linking /
on “A group of ex-NSA and Amazon engineers are building a ‘GitHub for data’”Submitted Electron vs. Tauri as a story · 133 points
HN discussionPostgreSQL support here https://github.com/dolthub/doltgresql Background and architecture discussion here https://dolthub.com/blog/2023-11-01-announcing-doltgresql/
Comment linking /blog/2023-11-01-announcing-doltgresql/
on “A MySQL compatible database engine written in pure Go”Submitted Prolly Trees as a story · 118 points
HN discussion> Why is Dolt MySQL flavored? TLDR; Because go-mysql-server existed. https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2022-03-28-have-postgres-want-d... We have a Postgres version of Dolt in the works called Doltgres. https://github.com/dolthub/doltgresql We might have a go-postgres-server package factored out eventually.
Comment linking /blog/2022-03-28-have-postgres-want-dolt/
on “A MySQL compatible database engine written in pure Go”Submitted Implementing join planning in our open source Golang SQL query engine as a story · 105 points
HN discussionHi, this is my project :) For us this package is most important as the query engine that powers Dolt: https://github.com/dolthub/dolt We aren't the original authors but have contributed the vast majority of its code at this point. Here's the origin story if you're interested: https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2020-05-04-adopting-go-mysql-se...
Comment linking /blog/2020-05-04-adopting-go-mysql-server/
on “A MySQL compatible database engine written in pure Go”Submitted A nasty bit of undefined timezone behavior in Golang as a story · 95 points
HN discussionNot a proxy in the traditional sense, no. go-mysql-server is a set of libraries that implement a SQL query engine and server in the abstract. When provided with a compatible database implementation using the provided interfaces, it becomes a MySQL compatible database server. Dolt [1] is the most complete implementation, but the in-memory database implementation the package ships with is suitable for testing. We didn…
Comment linking /blog/2020-05-04-adopting-go-mysql-server/
on “A MySQL compatible database engine written in pure Go”Submitted Writing a Postgres logical replication system in Golang as a story · 91 points
HN discussionDolt would do that for you. It has push/pull semantics like git. As a bonus you can use its version control features to implement sophisticated undo/redo features. https://dolthub.com/blog/2022-09-23-dolt-rollback-options/
Comment linking /blog/2022-09-23-dolt-rollback-options/
on “SQLite-on-the-server is misunderstood: Better at hyper-scale than micro-scale”Submitted Golang PGO builds using GitHub Actions as a story · 80 points
HN discussion
