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Just use Postgres

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Re: Just use Postgres

#11

Post by sampullman »

rcarmo wrote: post #5

The "SQLite is just a file" thing is actually an advantage. The example of a website is actually a pretty poor one, since any website that needs to scale beyond a single box has many options. The two easiest ones are: - Mix static and dynamic content generation (and let's face it, most websites are mostly static from a server perspective) - Designate a writer node and use any of the multiple SQLite replication featur…

Even without an ORM that supports both, as long as the DB layer is reasonably separated in your application it shouldn't be too much effort to switch. And if you've scaled to the point where it matters, you probably have the resources to do so.

Re: Just use Postgres

#12

Post by rcarmo »

andrewstuart wrote: post #6

Totally agree - I have tried many databases of all flavors, but I always come back to Postgres. HOWEVER - this blog post is missing a critical point.... the quote should be: ---> Just use Postgres AND ---> Just use SQL "Program the machine" stop using abstractions, ORMs, libraries and layers. Learn how to write SQL - or at least learn how to debug the very good SQL that ChatGPT writes. Please, use all the very powerf…

your answer was fine and good until you classified ChatGPT's SQL generation as "very good" -- which it is not. I've had _all_ GPT models spit out monstrosities and slow queries of all kinds.

ORMs are not all bad. In fact, some ORMs generate better code for really complex joins (think hundreds of tables, each with hundreds of columns) than humans, and often ensure that trivial best practices (like indexes and consistent foreign keys) are followed.

Writing SQL is a great skill, but if you tie yourself to a single database engine's idioms then you're in for a shock when you switch platforms/jobs/environments.

Re: Just use Postgres

#13

Post by tormeh »

MySQL is like Javascript: Full of bad decisions and footguns. It works perfectly fine, but I don’t see why you’d use it when Postgres exists.

Re: Just use Postgres

#14

Post by frithsun »

andrewstuart wrote: post #6

Totally agree - I have tried many databases of all flavors, but I always come back to Postgres. HOWEVER - this blog post is missing a critical point.... the quote should be: ---> Just use Postgres AND ---> Just use SQL "Program the machine" stop using abstractions, ORMs, libraries and layers. Learn how to write SQL - or at least learn how to debug the very good SQL that ChatGPT writes. Please, use all the very powerf…

Try to avoid the bespoke features of psql in favor of generic SQL unless cornered by circumstances into doing so, methinks.

If there's one complaint I have about pg, it's that it has too many features that encourage finding cute, non standard, non obvious ways of going about things.

Re: Just use Postgres

#15

Post by rcarmo »

codeflo wrote: post #8
bob1029 wrote: post #3

There is absolutely no reason you can't make SQLite go all the way. Starting with it is the only thing that makes sense to me. It is certainly a higher performance solution in the fair comparison of a hermetically sealed VM using SQLite vs application server + Postgres instance + Ethernet cable. We're talking 3-4 orders of magnitude difference in latency. It's not even a contest. There are also a lot of resilience st…

Why would you run Postgres on a different box in such a scenario? A docker run command to get a Postgres instance up and running isn’t any more complicated than linking in Sqlite, maybe even simpler. And you get proper ACID transactions for free.

1) Fault isolation in case of hardware failure

2) You may not even be able to _think_ about using Docker (OS restrictions, airgaps to install images, etc.)

These are just 2 that come to mind from working in regulated industries.

Re: Just use Postgres

#17

Post by [deleted] »

rcarmo wrote: post #12
andrewstuart wrote: post #6

Totally agree - I have tried many databases of all flavors, but I always come back to Postgres. HOWEVER - this blog post is missing a critical point.... the quote should be: ---> Just use Postgres AND ---> Just use SQL "Program the machine" stop using abstractions, ORMs, libraries and layers. Learn how to write SQL - or at least learn how to debug the very good SQL that ChatGPT writes. Please, use all the very powerf…

your answer was fine and good until you classified ChatGPT's SQL generation as "very good" -- which it is not. I've had _all_ GPT models spit out monstrosities and slow queries of all kinds. ORMs are not all bad. In fact, some ORMs generate better code for really complex joins (think hundreds of tables, each with hundreds of columns) than humans, and often ensure that trivial best practices (like indexes and consiste…

[deleted]

Re: Just use Postgres

#18

Post by nsonha »

> AI is a bubble

why does it even matter? I know that I need multimodal search in my product, and that is why I need vector DB. You're not saying anything interesting by saying "AI is a bubble". If you say something like I may not actually need RAG/mutimodal/semantic search/dedicated vector db then you may have my attention.

Re: Just use Postgres

#19

Post by StefanBatory »

andrewstuart wrote: post #6

Totally agree - I have tried many databases of all flavors, but I always come back to Postgres. HOWEVER - this blog post is missing a critical point.... the quote should be: ---> Just use Postgres AND ---> Just use SQL "Program the machine" stop using abstractions, ORMs, libraries and layers. Learn how to write SQL - or at least learn how to debug the very good SQL that ChatGPT writes. Please, use all the very powerf…

May I ask question about this part?

"Push all your business logic into big long stored procedures/functions - don't be pulling the data back and munging it in some other language - make the database do the work!"

From my courses I had at university, I've been led to believe that the current trend is doing hexagonal architecture, as that allows for better modularisation of the project and helps keep code clean over many years with many software engineers coming in and out. As a part of that I've been taught that the only part you could trust then is your internal modules - and even database has to treated as an external source, whose only job is to pull data in and out. How does that work in what you're suggesting? Is it just a different way of approaching things that will work depending on what's your goal is?

I'm just curious about this as I'm trying to get myself to learn a bit more, just to clarify

Re: Just use Postgres

#20

Post by nsonha »

tormeh wrote: post #13

MySQL is like Javascript: Full of bad decisions and footguns. It works perfectly fine, but I don’t see why you’d use it when Postgres exists.

more like PHP, which is funny because they always come in pair, prolly originate from the days of LAMP stack.

js is more associated with Mongo, another bad db. Most modern js projects (or any modern project really, except PHP) use Postgres

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