Top all-time · #3067
Spacetime
Company blog · spacetimedb.com/blogprogrammingdata
Spacetime is the company blog at spacetimedb.com, writing about programming and data. Since 2023, 25 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “SpacetimeDB”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-14, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (17) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers mention SpacetimeDB, a database for game and server logic, in threads on game dev, databases and scaling. The linked pages are its product site, docs and blog essays on databases and benchmarks.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 17 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Spacetime (formerly SpacetimeDB) is a reactive backend and real-time database for web apps and games. Write server logic in TypeScript, Rust, C#, or C++, and clients stay in sync automatically.
Most-linked posts?
- SpacetimeDB10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2023-08-10
- SpaceTimeDB4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-12-12
- Let's Talk about Benchmarks3 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2026-05-16
- Databases are the endgame for data-oriented design3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-06
- Ok, but does it scale?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-09-04
What Hacker News says?
I don't use Rust for game dev but I do for low level libraries and find it easier than C++ to get started. I have enjoyed it more than Java and like it for different reasons than Go, but it feels good to program in. As for the design patterns that a complex game requires, if you are considering Rust for game dev and ecs design patterns it might be useful to check out projects that are Rust centric like https://space…
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on “Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years”Submitted SpacetimeDB as a story · 347 points
HN discussionYou might find SpacetimeDB interesting. https://spacetimedb.com/
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on “Why SQLite Uses Bytecode”Submitted Ok, but does it scale? as a story · 126 points
HN discussionGiven the name I was also expecting some clever SQL-like data structure/query for fast spatial lookup but I digress. Game physics involves a lot of things (solvers, collision detection, numerical stability, etc.). I am skeptical of their claims of being able to run physics in what I understand are stored procedures for their database. I looked at their docs for physics https://spacetimedb.com/docs/unity/part-4 where…
Comment linking /docs/unity/part-4
on “SpacetimeDB”Submitted SpacetimeDB v1.0.0 as a story · 39 points
HN discussionThere are very few things I would want to do less than complicated logic in SQL. At least these days we get the alternative of SpacetimeDB functions https://spacetimedb.com/docs/functions But having everything in stringly typed environment with minimal stdlib in things like mssql? Yeah, there's a reason why it's not a popular pattern.
Comment linking /docs/functions
on “We ported the original Doom to SQL”Submitted SpacetimeDB as a story · 5 points
HN discussionYep, LLMs tend to get into weird snags like this, usually with either niche or state of the art stuff. I tried to get a game prototype up and running with https://spacetimedb.com - GPT-5 was clearly working with outdated information and couldn't get anything done. It just reverted back to things that didn't exist (commands had changed, their arguments were different). Same project, same GPT-5. This time it went in w…
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on “GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that's not the worst of it”Submitted Databases are the endgame for data-oriented design as a story · 3 points
HN discussionTigerBeetle is plenty interesting, though if half of SpacetimeDB's [1] [2] claims are true, it's even more interesting for me. (The title of this post has "_a_ most interesting database", while the article has "_the_", hence this comment) [1] - https://spacetimedb.com/ [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzDnA_EVhTU&
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on “TigerBeetle is a most interesting database”Submitted SpaceTimeDB as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> without years of hardwork on test you can't say you are correct Before, I have the myth in my head that RDBMS development is like cryptography/kernels: Something not mean for humans to do. Now working as part of one ( http://spacetimedb.com ) I see now that is hard, but doable. Certainly MORE EASY than working in ERPs that is the thing that I have done for more than 20 years (now THAT is what is insane). Literally…
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on “Build your own SQLite in Rust, Part 5: Evaluating queries”Submitted Why we chose OpenID Connect for SpacetimeDB as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI disagree. First and foremost, what if there is not "the" database? What if you have multiple places that store data? For example, a postgres for ACID stuff, something like Kafka/RabbitMQ or similar to easily communicate with other services (or even yourself) - and sure, you could do that in postgres, but it's a trade-off. Then maybe something like redis/memcache for quick lookups/caching, then maybe elasticsearch…
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on “Design Pressure: The Invisible Hand That Shapes Your Code”Submitted Ok, but Does It Scale? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionBusiness logics in PostgresSQL? Impressive, never think of using it this way but it looks actually pretty good! Last time I saw similar concept is at https://spacetimedb.com/ , maybe one day PostgresSQL can do the same, since it's already powerful enough to support web apps this way.
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on “Derek Sivers's database and web apps”Submitted Let's Talk about Benchmarks as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis kind of reminds me of the article: https://spacetimedb.com/blog/databases-and-data-oriented-des... Where basically the ECS boils down to what is essentially a relational database, and here it looks like that's being leveraged to do snapshotting and point-in-time queries!
Comment linking /blog/databases-and-data-oriented-design
on “Revy – proof-of-concept time-travel debugger for the Bevy game engine”Submitted SpacetimeDB – Transactions. Zero Bottlenecks as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThat's a very fair question, and it got me thinking. So I wrote a full post answering it. But the short answer is, as long as you don't have to twist your architecture in knots to get high performance, then yes it's worth it. A system that can scale up, can also scale fast & cheap. https://spacetimedb.com/blog/okay-but-does-it-need-to-scale
Comment linking /blog/okay-but-does-it-need-to-scale
on “Ok, but does it scale?”Submitted SpacetimeDB Launched a Referral Program as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWhile I think the tech is cool, and I'm sure it is fast, the fact that the benchmarks make assumptions about your stack doesn't sit right with me. They even admit that it is the main contributor to its speed: > The most significant (but not sole) reason SpacetimeDB is faster than other backends is that we have decreased the round trip time between your server and your database by at least 99.95%. In SpacetimeDB your…
Comment linking /blog/benchmarking
on “Ok, but does it scale?”Submitted SpacetimeDB: Combined database and backend for MMO games as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWe have this document: https://spacetimedb.com/docs/how-to/incremental-migrations We also plan to allow you do apply migrations when you publish your module, but that is not yet released.
Comment linking /docs/how-to/incremental-migrations
on “Show HN: SpacetimeDB 1.0 Is Here”Submitted SpacetimeDB: A new database written in Rust that replaces your server as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYeah, I worked on https://tablam.org and https://spacetimedb.com . It becomes pretty clear that `order` is a significant property to make useful (and performant!) programs. "Duplicates" is also required to make usefull programs. One nonobvious reason for this: You wanna report that a `customer` has a duplicated key `1`. If you CAN'T model `[(customer.id = 1), (customer.id = 1)]` then you can't report errors! And `er…
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on “What if an SQL Statement Returned a Database?”this sounds like convex.dev or https://spacetimedb.com/ (full disclosure I don't use either)
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on “Just Use Postgres for Durable Workflows”Extraordinary claims perhaps, but correct ones nevertheless: https://spacetimedb.com/blog/benchmarking . The article says that we don't provide strong durability guarantees. Pure ipse dixit. And IIRC he's already cleaned it up a little. The shamelessness with which people published bogus claims about SpacetimeDB after this was really really astonishing. And so many were quick to dismiss the overall results based on…
Comment linking /blog/benchmarking
on “SpacetimeDB: A Short Technical Review”As a SpacetimeDB dev, I absolutely agree. However, these benchmarks are more than fair. Please read our full technical writeup on the benchmarks: https://spacetimedb.com/blog/benchmarking
Comment linking /blog/benchmarking
on “SpacetimeDB: A Short Technical Review”
