Ok, I’m just going to give it to you straight. No beating around the bush, you came here for the DuckDB Labs bought by AWS news right? Wondering what that means? What does it mean for DuckDB? What is DuckDB Labs, even? Never fear, I got you boo.
What is DuckDB Labs?
This is a good question, many people might be confused from the start what exactly is DuckDB Labs? You’ve probably heard of the widely popular DuckDB open-source project, I’m sure.
I recently had a bit of a self-identity crisis; of course, it was tied to spending way too much time on social media. I do try to avoid the worst of it, got rid of Twitter (X) this year, and mostly stick to Substack, LinkedIn, YouTube, occasional Reddit, and Hacker News. Probably still too much.
I’ve always seen it as a form of self-preservation, probably due to growing up the youngest of five in the middle of the prairie next to the river, in the only county without a working stoplight.
I try to be pragmatic and never dogmatic, except when someone says “Production” and “Notebook” in the same sentence.
A few things have not changed in the age of AI, where the LLM has replaced 3/4 of the brain power of a whole generation of engineers who once found their meaning in the code they wrote. I mean, I hate to say it’s true, but a lot of folk should have been finding their meaning in the code they decided NOT to write. It’s the classic mix-up of smart engineers and developers thinking that their “use” or “importance” to a company or product was the amount and cleverness of the code they put out. They worshipped at the feet of their own fingers, enamored with staring at themselves in the mirror, convincing themselves they were smarter and could write better code than those around them.