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It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

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Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#151

Post by bcrosby95 »

saisrirampur wrote: post #78
PunchyHamster wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is really that you can only evaluate which of alternatives is better once you have working product with data big enough - else it's just basically following trends and hoping your barely informed decision won't be wrong.

Agree to disagree here. I see a world where developers need to think about (reasonable) scale from day one, or at least very early. We’ve been seeing this play out at ClickHouse - the need for purpose-built OLAP is reducing from years to months. Also integration with ClickHouse is few weeks of effort for potentially significantly faster performance for analytics.

Reasonable scale means... what exactly?

Here's my opinion: just use postgres. If you're experienced enough to not when I say that, go for it, the advice isn't for you. If you aren't, I'm probably saving you from yourself. "Reasonable scale" to these people could mean dozens of inserts per second, which is why people talking vagueries around scale is madenning to me. If you aren't going to actually say what that means, you will lead people who don't know better down the wrong path.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#152

Post by eek2121 »

olivia-banks wrote: post #5

I do agree, I don’t know why more people don’t just use Postgres. If I’m doing data exploration with lots of data (e.g., GIS, nD vectors), I’ll just spin up a Postgres.app on my macOS laptop, install what little I need, and it just works and is plenty fast for my needs. It’s a really great choice for a lot of domains. That being said, while I think Postgres is “the right tool for the job” in many cases, sometimes you…

Standardizing on one single tiny little project is always a bad idea. Why? Some examples (which are admittedly not related to postgres, because I don't know their structure):

1) A single person, doing a ton of heavy lifting, leaves, or worse, turns it over, or silently sells out to a nefarious person.

2) A severe security vulnerability is found. If everyone is using postgres, everyone is vulnerable. Bonus points if the vulnerability is either not publicly disclosed or it is hard to fix.

3) Commercial/Government interests heavily influence and push the project into places that could make it vulnerable in any given way. This is absolutely a thing.

4) AI. No clarification here. Just use your imagination, with recent news regarding FFMPEG and other projects in mind.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#153

Post by avmich »

I have two fundamental problems with Postgres - an excellent piece of technology, no questions about that.

First, to use Postgres for all those cases you have to learn various aspects of Postgres. Postgres isn't a unified tool which can do everything - instead it's a set of tools under the same umbrella. As a result, you don't save much from similarly learning all those different systems and using Postgres only as a RDBMS. And if something isn't implemented in Postgres better than in a 3rd party system, it could be easier to replace that 3rd party system - just one part of the system - rather than switching from Postgres-only to Postgres-and-then-some. In other words, Postgres has little benefits when many technologies are needed comparing with the collection of separate tools. The article notwithstanding.

Second, Postgres is written for HDDs - hard disk drives, with their patterns of data access and times. Today we usually work with SSDs, and we'd benefit from having SSD-native RDBMSes. They exist, and Postgres may lose to them - both in simplicity and performance - significantly enough.

Still, Postgres is pretty good, yes.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#154

Post by MarcelOlsz »

sfifs wrote: post #124
olivia-banks wrote: post #5

I do agree, I don’t know why more people don’t just use Postgres. If I’m doing data exploration with lots of data (e.g., GIS, nD vectors), I’ll just spin up a Postgres.app on my macOS laptop, install what little I need, and it just works and is plenty fast for my needs. It’s a really great choice for a lot of domains. That being said, while I think Postgres is “the right tool for the job” in many cases, sometimes you…

A bit off topic but the one thing I've never been able to figure out with Postgres easily & reliably is what magic incantations allow a user account full access to a specific database but not to others, particularly in cases of managed postgres offered by cloud providers. `GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES` never seems to work. Having to look up and spend time fixing permissions every time itself makes using Postgres for simple u…

Just let Claude fuck it up for you and learn from its mistakes.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#155

Post by vagab0nd »

I recently started digging into databases for the first time since college, and from a novice's perspective, postgres is absolutely magical. You can throw in 10M+ rows across twenty columns, spread over five tables, add some indices, and get sub-100ms queries for virtually anything you want. If something doesn't work, you just ask it for an analysis and immediately know what index to add or how to fix your query. It blows my mind. Modern databases are miracles.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#156

Post by quotemstr »

cheriot wrote: post #84
saisrirampur wrote: post #55

I’m a huge Postgres fan. That said, I don’t agree with the blanket advice of “just use Postgres.” That stance often comes from folks who haven’t been exposed enough to (newer) purpose-built technologies and the tremendous value they can create The argument, as in this blog, is that a single Postgres stack is simpler and reduces complexity. What’s often overlooked is the CAPEX and OPEX required to make Postgres work w…

> I don’t agree with the blanket advice of “just use Postgres.” I take it as meaning use Postgres until there's a reason not to. ie build for the scale / growth rate you have not "how will this handle the 100 million users I dream of." A simpler tech stack will be simpler to iterate on.

Yes. That's a good framing. PostgreSQL is a good default for online LOB-y things. There are all sorts of reasons to use something other than PostgreSQL, but raw performance at scale becomes such a reason later than you think.

Cloud providers will rent you enormous beasts of machines that, while expensive, will remain cheaper than rewriting for a migration for a long time.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#159

Post by jongjong »

saisrirampur wrote: post #55

I’m a huge Postgres fan. That said, I don’t agree with the blanket advice of “just use Postgres.” That stance often comes from folks who haven’t been exposed enough to (newer) purpose-built technologies and the tremendous value they can create The argument, as in this blog, is that a single Postgres stack is simpler and reduces complexity. What’s often overlooked is the CAPEX and OPEX required to make Postgres work w…

I hate how developers are often very skeptical but all the skepticism goes out the window if the tech is sufficiently hyped up.

And TBH, developers are pretty dumb not to realize that the tech tools monoculture is a way for business folks to make us easily replaceable... If all companies use the same tech, it turns us into exchangeable commodities which can easily be replaced and sourced across different organizations.

Look at the typical React dev. They have zero leverage and can be replaced by vibe coding kiddies straight out of school or sourced from literally any company on earth. And there are some real negatives to using silver bullet tools. They're not even the best tools for a lot of cases! The React dev is a commodity and they let it happen to them. Outsmarted by dumb business folks who dropped out of college. They probably didn't even come up with the idea; the devs did. Be smarter people. They're going to be harvesting you like Cavendish.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#160

Post by daotoad »

saisrirampur wrote: post #130
hermanzegerman wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That wasn’t my intention though to mention my workplace multiple times for the sake of PR. Try to avoid being that, atleast on hn. :)

What I really want to know is, is it mighty mighty? And does it let it all hang out?
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