Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)

#141

Post by jeltz » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

Foobar8568 wrote: post #126

oauea wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as mysql can't run ddl statements in a transaction it's worthless as far as I'm concerned. Also the thing where they (used to?) silently truncate your data when it wouldn't fit a column is absolutely insane. I'll take operational footguns over losing half my data every damn time.

MySQL is as advanced as Oracle on this topic (DDL in transaction), unless Oracle has changed in the recent years.

Which means equally useless. I agree with him about transactional DDL. Having worked both with it and without it I would never want to go back to MySQL.

Re: Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)

#142

Post by I_am_tiberius » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

doctor_eval wrote: post #48

I_am_tiberius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would only have thought of MySQL.

MySQL isn't a general solution to problems of scale, because you don't know what problems you're going to have until you have them. So for example if your scaling problem is ACID compliant database updates - say you're the next fintech - then I was under the impression that MySQL would be the last database you'd want to be using. Have I missed something?

I'm no expert and can't answer that. It was just my impression, and I might be wrong, that for scaling purposes MySQL is better suited. Currently I'm working on a Saas product and the test instance that runs on Digital Ocean sometimes causes connection limit issues (with connection pool) sometimes. Sure my code is maybe not perfectly utilizing connections but I'm really afraid that this happens in production and I don't know how to fix it. On my test environment I just restart everything but on a productive environment I can't do that all the time.

Re: Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)

#143

Post by twic » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 4:11 PM UTC

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #113

rattray wrote: post #82

Another recent Postgres-complaint post from one of the best engineers I've worked with: https://blog.nelhage.com/post/some-opinionated-sql-takes/ Quoting his conclusion: > As for Postgres, I have enormous respect for it and its engineering and capabilities, but, for me, it’s just too damn operationally scary. In my experience it’s much worse than MySQL for operational footguns and performance cliffs, where using it s…

They’re so right about performance gotchas. I worked on a large Java project a few years back and they were transitioning from MySQL to Postgres, after the upgrade performance was abysmal. I then spent the next 5 months optimizing queries. A lot of the issues were inner joins and how MySQL and Postgres handled lookups in inner joins differently. I would still pick Postgres over MySQL because the tools and features ar…

My experience was the opposite - a Java app running on MySQL that had painfully slow joins, that immediately got much faster on porting to PostgreSQL!

Re: Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)

#144

Post by brandmeyer » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

cpa wrote: post #5

ironmagma wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget “libpq”

Funfact: PQ is short for toilet paper in French So libpq always cracks me up. But then again there's a theorem prover called Coq (which is indeed pronounced as you imagine, it means rooster) and it's been named by French researchers at INRIA!

As an American, I feel like I have to deliberately mis-pronounce 'coq' the theorem prover like 'coke' the soda.

Re: Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)

#145

Post by notyourday » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #74

o_p wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its better to work on getting all those users before planning what color the ferrari will be..

While the executives are dreaming of exotic cars, the engineers are dreaming of exotic architectures. The difference is that when the CEO says, "It's crucial that I have this Ferrari BEFORE the business takes off," nobody takes them seriously.

The really funny part is that the engineers don't just dream of those architectures, they implement them. That's how you get an app that adds two numbers that runs on K8S, requires four databases, a queuing system, a deploy pipeline, a grafana/prometheus cluster, some ad-hock Rust kernel driver and a devops team.

Re: Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)

#146

Post by twic » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #50

>While much of this praise is certainly well-deserved, the lack of meaningful dissent left me a bit bothered. Had the same feeling when I was reading that thread. And has been for quite some time when the hype is over the top. The problem is seemingly Tech is often a cult. On HN, mentioning MySQL is better at certain things and hoping Postgres improve will draw out the Oracle haters and Postgres apologist. Or they ar…

I have a kneejerk reaction against "there is something, anything at all, wrong with PostgreSQL" posts. I don't think it's because i'm in a cult.

I think it's because, despite real flaws, PostgreSQL is still the best all-round option, and still the thing i would most like to find when i move to a new company. Every post pointing out a flaw with PostgreSQL is potentially ammunition for an energetic but misguided early-stage employee of that company to say "no, let's not use PostgreSQL, let's use ${some_random_database_you_will_regret} instead".

I suppose the root of this is that i basically don't trust other programmers to make good decisions.

Re: Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)

#147

Post by fdr » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

I think this is a reasonable list of weaknesses, with a few quibbles. I guess since I've built parts of Heroku Postgres, and Citus Cloud, and now Crunchy Bridge...maybe I'd know.

On the other hand...on the whole...maintaining Postgres is probably among the cheapest pieces of software on which I have to do so, which is why the cloud business model works. Something less stable (in all senses of the word) would chew up too much time per customer.

Re: Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)

#148

Post by bpodgursky » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

I'm surprised nobody is complaining about the complexity of the permission system.

I'm a generally smart guy, but setting up default permissions so that new tables created by a service user are owned by the application user... is shockingly complicated.

(I love using Postgres overall, and have no intention of going back to MySQL.)

Re: Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)

#149

Post by dhritzkiv » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #127

otikik wrote: post #2

I will add one minor point to this list: The name. To this day I am convinced that the Hazapard UpperCASE usage is what has granted us: - A database called PostgreSQL - A library called libpostgres - An app folder called postgres - An executable called psql - A host of client libraries which chose to call themselves Pg or a variation.

This is true. Many people get confused by the name. I've met several developers who refer to it as "Postgray" or some variation.

I've never heard that before, but I kind of like it. Sounds a bit nicer and is easier to say than 'Post Gress'. I'm still not sure how to pronounce the proper name, when it has 'SQL' as part of it. I think it's 'Post Gress Queue Ell', but it feels… bad.

Re: Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)

#150

Post by paulryanrogers » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

aaron-santos wrote: post #137

paulryanrogers wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how personal scars can entrench ones perspective. After MySQL 8's renaming-table-will-crash-server bug I'm reluctant to use it for new projects.

In any sufficiently large dev team the technology choices trend toward zero. Because everyone has their "I will not work with this tech after dealing with its nasty bug."

Indeed. And products can get better and worse over time. If there's a consistent pattern of critical bugs at least with FOSS there is the possibility of forks and 3rd party patches.