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What’s so exciting about Postgres?

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Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#51

Post by robertlagrant »

soneca wrote: post #44
noir_lord wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing this in action now, the difference between the backend code and the frontend code is stark and the backend code isn't up to my standard either (and my standards aren't that high, I know I'm merely competent for many places). It just seems to be the nature of the web side of things, lots of sloppiness. The devs are smart enough, they just don't think and it shows. That or they use something but clearly don'…

Should I assume from your comment that you never saw code worth improving other than those written by JavaScript developers?

Ah, pointless exclusion of the middle.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#52

Post by robertlagrant »

api wrote: post #50
pricechild wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet we'd both seriously consider (if not prefer) sqlite over postgres in a bunch of scenarios?

SQLite is amazing, and “lite” is really not fair. I’ve seen it handle 1tb+ with at least decent performance. It’s not a replacement for a real DB but it is damn close.

It's not, because it is a real DB. It's just one for single user access only.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#53

Post by edoceo »

pricechild wrote: post #42
baybal2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG steamrolls every other general purpose database, and has tons of extensions, and frontends so you can use it in any database paradigm. With 30m minutes of time, you can turn it into a document db, log/time series db, columnar, graph, key value, whatever

I bet we'd both seriously consider (if not prefer) sqlite over postgres in a bunch of scenarios?

I love PG and sometimes I see some cases where maybe Sqlite would work "better" but just as soon as it starts to get a little bigger I start missing all the cool stuff that PG has.

Sqlite is still awesome but PG is more awesomer. And since the cost is the same I just stick with PG now. Unless I'm resource constrained (which for my work is rare)

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#54

Post by outside1234 »

jschwartzi wrote: post #49
erokar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical bitter backend developer spew. Works with Java or C# and hasn't explored much more than OO and procedural. Threatened by anything new, creative or explorative. Stuck in his ways and prefers to do mundane, uncreative and repetetive tasks, like writing boilerplate to get stuff in and out of a database. Soon to be automated away by serverless.

Good luck running serverless code in a lightbulb.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/iot-edge

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#55

Post by api »

fuhrysteve wrote: post #10
sandinmyjoints wrote: post #3

> It was really funny, Uber switched from MySQL to Postgres, and then Postgres to MySQL. So they’ve gone back and forth a couple of times, but when they’ve swapped to Postgres, they had to figure out – they had all this app logic that relied on things being case-insensitive, because the database just doesn’t respect case search. This suggests to me that the guest here maybe doesn't know about collations? But that doe…

Great practical note by Josh Berkus on why Uber left Posgresql. Basically: runaway table bloat because Uber had a usecase that postgres doesn't address as well as InnoDB. https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/5797D5A1.5030009%40agl...

The whole VACUUM paradigm is the biggest thing that bugs me about pgsql. The fact that it can actually freeze things always worries me. Can’t this happen constantly in the background like modern GCs?

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#57

Post by postit »

systemvoltage wrote: post #19
Animats wrote: post #11

Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work . The main reason webcrap works is because the databases underneath work. If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably.

It is often downvoted to talk about the "javascript crowd" on HN, but I've worked in software industry long enough to unequivocally and with certainty say that it totally lives up to the cliches. It never gets old to scold people that are not serious, disciplined and principled in their endeavors that affect the rest of the world. Javascript community absolutely deserves the avalanche of criticisms they face. It is t…

I agree. We’ve also spent the last 10 years trying to make web app behave like desktop apps and they are still not matching.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#58

Post by jeff-davis »

Animats wrote: post #11

Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work . The main reason webcrap works is because the databases underneath work. If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably.

A lot of people imagine databases that way, but they are complex beasts with a lot of features. Everyone seems to say features don't matter, except of course for the ones that they use. Which is often a growing set as your application matures.

All of these features are exciting to the people that can use them.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#59

Post by api »

erokar wrote: post #46
systemvoltage wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is often downvoted to talk about the "javascript crowd" on HN, but I've worked in software industry long enough to unequivocally and with certainty say that it totally lives up to the cliches. It never gets old to scold people that are not serious, disciplined and principled in their endeavors that affect the rest of the world. Javascript community absolutely deserves the avalanche of criticisms they face. It is t…

Typical bitter backend developer spew. Works with Java or C# and hasn't explored much more than OO and procedural. Threatened by anything new, creative or explorative. Stuck in his ways and prefers to do mundane, uncreative and repetetive tasks, like writing boilerplate to get stuff in and out of a database. Soon to be automated away by serverless.

Ooh, permanent lock in to a single company’s bill by the second mainframe! How exciting!

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#60

Post by pmiller2 »

This was a really good article, and thank you @jerodsanto for submitting it. I learned probably 6-7 big things about Postgres reading it that I didn't know before.

I won't list out those things, because, I'm sure it wouldn't be relevant to most people reading this comment. :). But, there are a couple things I noticed that I do want to mention:

> There were these edge cases in there, where it’s kind of like less safe. And Postgres was there, and it had a reputation of being just rock-solid, consistent, and more strict with your data

> "... I never had that moment where I’m like “Oh, Postgres, you screwed me over.”

This is a huge deal, and, IMO, the reason to choose Postgres over MySQL. MySQL has some horrendous defaults. You can make things a little better, but, AFAIK, you can't even get to where Postgres starts out of the box. Most of that consists of MySQL being extremely permissive with what it allows you to do in your SQL. Many of those things are non-standard, and some are quite unsafe. Postgres not only prioritizes safety, it keeps the application developer honest.

It can be a little complain-y, but I'd rather have my database complain than do stuff that could lose data. One great example is when you try to stuff more characters into a text field than it can accommodate. By default, MySQL just truncates the string silently; Postgres just doesn't allow it.

> PostGIS is a huge one. It’s a whole geospatial database.

This is the other point I want to call out. I've had the pleasure of working with PostGIS before. The main thing I'd want to say about PostGIS is that, although there are issues working with geojson and GIS in general, PostGIS doesn't exacerbate any of them. Generally speaking, PostGIS is about as pleasant to work with as a geospatial database can be.

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