Backends Should be Designed for Product Developers

Our CTO James gave a talk at Developer Week 2024 about how backends have been letting down product developers by not providing clean abstractions that empower development without introducing unnecessary complexity. James outlines four major failures of the status quo: * Bad ideas in query models * Bad ideas in type systems * Bad ideas in caching and performance * Bad ideas in data sync He explains why these exist, how they are holding back developers, and discusses recent innovations at Convex that address these four areas. 0:20 - Intro and academic context 1:27 - Lessons to learn from Barbara Liskov 2:12 - The productivity crisis of programming 4:25 - The platform crisis of programming 5:53 - Bad ideas in querying databases 8:56 - Good ideas in querying databases 9:55 - Bad ideas in type systems 11:46 - Good ideas in type systems 13:06 - Premature formality 14:53 - Bad ideas in caching and performance 16:23 - Good ideas in caching and performance 17:32 - Bad ideas in data syncing 18:37 - Good ideas in data syncing 21:12 - The solution to the platform crisis