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Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

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Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#101

Post by fauigerzigerk »

pritambarhate wrote: post #80
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's ultimately about the product. But here's the problem. Five years ago, when someone on here said, "I wrote this non-trivial software", the implication was that a highly motivated and competent software engineer put a lot of effort into making sure that the project meets a reasonable standard of quality and will probably put some effort into maintaining the project. Today, it does not necessarily impl…

Even with LLMs delivering software that consistently works requires quite a bit of work and in most cases requires certain level of expertise. Humans also write quite a bit of garbage code. People using LLMs to code these days is similar to how majority people stopped using assembly and moved to C and C++, then to garbage collected languages and dynamically typed languages. People were always looking for ways to make…

I'm not opposed to AI generated code in principle.

I'm just saying that we don't know how much effort was put into making this and we don't know whether it works.

The existence of a repository containing hundereds of files, thousands of SLOCs and a folder full of tests tells us less today than it used to.

There's one thing in particular that I find quite astonishing sometimes. I don't know about this particular project, but some people use LLMs to generate both the implementation and the test cases.

What does that mean? The test cases are supposed to be the formal specification of our requirements. If we do not specify formally what we expect a tool to do, how do we know whether the tool has done what we expected, including in edge cases?

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#102

Post by efxhoy »

riskable wrote: post #85

PostgreSQL seems to have become the be-all, end-all SQL database that does everything and does it all well. And it's free! I'm wondering why anyone would want to use anything else at this point (for SQL).

It’s the clear OLTP winner but for OLAP it’s still not amazing out of the box.

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#103

Post by foltik »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #71
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's ultimately about the product. But here's the problem. Five years ago, when someone on here said, "I wrote this non-trivial software", the implication was that a highly motivated and competent software engineer put a lot of effort into making sure that the project meets a reasonable standard of quality and will probably put some effort into maintaining the project. Today, it does not necessarily impl…

Hand-written code never implied much about quality no matter the author, especially as we all use libraries of reusable code of varying quality

Agree that just being hand-written doesn’t imply quality, but based on my priors, if something obviously looks like vibe-code it’s probably low quality.

Most of the vibe-code I’ve seen so far appears functional to the point that people will defend it, but if you take a closer look it’s a massively over complicated rat’s nest that would be difficult for a human to extend or maintain. Of course you could just use more AI, but that would only further amplify these problems.

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#104

Post by christophilus »

zachrip wrote: post #83
pak9rabid wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Range types are a godsend when you need to calculate things like overlapping or intersecting time/date ranges.

Can you give a real world example?

I think the examples here are pretty good: https://boringsql.com/posts/beyond-start-end-columns/

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#105

Post by newusertoday »

elitan wrote: post #17

For those who can't wait for PG18 or need full instance isolation: I built Velo, which does instant branching using ZFS snapshots instead of reflinks. Works with any PG version today. Each branch is a fully isolated PostgreSQL container with its own port. ~2-5 seconds for a 100GB database. https://github.com/elitan/velo Main difference from PG18's approach: you get complete server isolation (useful for testing migrat…

thanks for sharing its interesting approach. I am not sure why people are complaining most of the software is written with the help of agents these days.

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#106

Post by onion2k »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #56
pritambarhate wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say there is an architect and he also owns a construction company. This architect, then designs a building and gets it built from of his employees and contractors. In such cases the person says, I have built this building. People who found companies, say they have built companies. It's commonly accepted in our society. So even if Claude built for it for GP, as long as GP designed it, paid for tools (Claude) to…

I agree that it's ultimately about the product. But here's the problem. Five years ago, when someone on here said, "I wrote this non-trivial software", the implication was that a highly motivated and competent software engineer put a lot of effort into making sure that the project meets a reasonable standard of quality and will probably put some effort into maintaining the project. Today, it does not necessarily impl…

the implication was that a highly motivated and competent software engineer put a lot of effort into making sure that the project meets a reasonable standard of quality and will probably put some effort into maintaining the project

That is entirely an assumption on the part of the reader. Nothing about someone saying "I built this complicated thing!" implies competence, or any desire to maintain it beyond building it.

The problem you're facing is survivorship bias. You can think of lots of examples of where that has happened, and very few where it hasn't, because when the author of the project is incompetent or unmotivated the project doesn't last long enough for you to hear about it twice.

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#107

Post by fauigerzigerk »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #71
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's ultimately about the product. But here's the problem. Five years ago, when someone on here said, "I wrote this non-trivial software", the implication was that a highly motivated and competent software engineer put a lot of effort into making sure that the project meets a reasonable standard of quality and will probably put some effort into maintaining the project. Today, it does not necessarily impl…

Hand-written code never implied much about quality no matter the author, especially as we all use libraries of reusable code of varying quality

Not much, but infinitely more than now.

If someone puts weeks and months of their time into building something, then I'm willing to take that as proof of their motivation to create something good.

I'm also willing to take the existence of non-trivial code that someone wrote manually as proof of some level of competence.

The presence of motivation + competence makes it more likely that the result could be something good.

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#109

Post by fauigerzigerk »

onion2k wrote: post #106
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's ultimately about the product. But here's the problem. Five years ago, when someone on here said, "I wrote this non-trivial software", the implication was that a highly motivated and competent software engineer put a lot of effort into making sure that the project meets a reasonable standard of quality and will probably put some effort into maintaining the project. Today, it does not necessarily impl…

the implication was that a highly motivated and competent software engineer put a lot of effort into making sure that the project meets a reasonable standard of quality and will probably put some effort into maintaining the project That is entirely an assumption on the part of the reader. Nothing about someone saying "I built this complicated thing!" implies competence, or any desire to maintain it beyond building it…

>Nothing about someone saying "I built this complicated thing!" implies competence, or any desire to maintain it beyond building it.

I disagree. The fact that someone has written a substantial amount of non-trivial code does imply a higher level of competence and motivation compared to not having done that.

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