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When did Postgres become cool?

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Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#61

Post by sdsd »

evanelias wrote: post #56
sdsd wrote: post #44

When MySQL was purchased by Oracle. For a time, MariaDB was the new option, but its commitment to binary compatibility with MySQL made it feel bogged down. Fun fact: Julian Assange contributed code to PostgreSQL a long time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18464671

MariaDB doesn't have a commitment to binary compatibility with MySQL, though. For a time it was marketed as a drop-in replacement, but that has been increasingly untrue for over a decade now.

Aha, I didn't know that. Looks like the marketing worked too well on me! In any case, the lie of drop-in compatibility at least I think led some people to look for alternatives that wouldn't be hampered by Oracle-era MySQL.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#62

Post by ianmcgowan »

mrj wrote: post #2

As with anything truly cool, it was cool long before most people noticed. I have been using Postgres on and off since ~7.2 and it has always been amazing. Being known as cool takes time.

Coolness is not evenly distributed :-) Even banks now have Postgres, it doesn't hurt that Oracle is such a nightmare to deal with..

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#63

Post by wonks »

mrj wrote: post #2

As with anything truly cool, it was cool long before most people noticed. I have been using Postgres on and off since ~7.2 and it has always been amazing. Being known as cool takes time.

It surely was the "I'm so cool you don't even know I'm cool" kind of cool.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#64

Post by prewett »

I know I made the decision in 2012 or so. The startup I was working at used Postgres for the server, and I didn't know anything about databases, so, okay, fine, whatever. Then they started an analytics team, which went with MySQL ... and ended up discovering that MySQL only handled up to 3-byte characters of UTF-8, which was a problem since the users of our game Chinese characters and lots of creative abuses of Unicode characters. My takeaway was that UTF-8 has always been at least 4 bytes (and I think it might have required 6 back then, which has since been walked back), and that any database which could not implement the spec of something fundamental like UTF-8 correctly was completely out of the realm of consideration.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#65

Post by devdude1337 »

My first experience with postgres was around 2009. Picked it out of curiosity and it ended up at the clients server doing it’s job and never bothered anyone.

I thought it was very cool doing fancy joins and reliable procedures but then came the NoSQL era and I nearly forgot about it. Then everyone started to realize that any growing database ends up with complicated relations and lots of applications do not fit non-relational data structures well. Suddenly postgres came up with the json and jsonb types. It was like a fairytale.

So when did it became cool? Around 2016/2017. Why? Good technical decisions and execution.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#66

Post by hashtag-til »

CRConrad wrote: post #60
ASalazarMX wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last straw was when Oracle bought MySQL, and it was forked to MariaSQL. Postgres went from the nerdy awkward kid to the nerdy cool kid, while MySQL started drinking, getting split personalities, and living off his past fame.

> MariaSQL MariaDB.

The “new” name never really stick…

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#68

Post by duozerk »

sdsd wrote: post #61
evanelias wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MariaDB doesn't have a commitment to binary compatibility with MySQL, though. For a time it was marketed as a drop-in replacement, but that has been increasingly untrue for over a decade now.

Aha, I didn't know that. Looks like the marketing worked too well on me! In any case, the lie of drop-in compatibility at least I think led some people to look for alternatives that wouldn't be hampered by Oracle-era MySQL.

I didn't either until it bit me in the ass a few months back - often it's shitty proprietary software being only compatible with "genuine" (oracle) MySQL.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#69

Post by convolvatron »

jghn wrote: post #38

I remember in the early-mid aughts I evaluated Postgres vs MySQL. At the time the conventional wisdom seemed to be that Postgres was focusing more on robustness and MySQL more on functionality. And a lot of people seemed to prefer MySQL because of this. When I looped back around several years later Postgres had started to overcome MySQL. Conventional wisdom then was it was roughly at feature parity with MySQL but mor…

Postgres started in 1986. its was never less featureful than MySQL...in fact MySQL tried to get by without _transactions_ for the longest time. the fact that MySQL had more market/mindshare at any point is more of a testament about crowd mentality than anything about either of the two databases.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#70

Post by convolvatron »

throwaway71271 wrote: post #28

i used mysql for almost 20 years, since 3.23 and in the last 4 years i am exclusively using postgres (because of the hype and i thought i am missing out), and its not my cup of tea. i just love mysql's hackable storage engine (particularly the new lsmt engines), and i hate toast so much, not to mention the permission system which is so convoluted and it is so easy to shoot yourself in the foot. and of course it does…

curious - Postgres isn't hackable enough for you? I've found it much more amenable to changes in say, the storage engine, than mysql ever was.
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