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It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

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Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#171

Post by teraflop »

vagab0nd wrote: post #155

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…

I don't mean this as a knock on you, but your comment is a bit funny to me because it has very little to do with "modern" databases.

What you're describing would probably have been equally possible with Postgres from 20 years ago, running on an average desktop PC from 20 years ago. (Or maybe even with SQLite from 20 years ago, for that matter.)

Don't get me wrong, Postgres has gotten a lot better since 2006. But most of the improvements have been in terms of more advanced query functionality, or optimizations for those advanced queries, or administration/operational features (e.g. replication, backups, security).

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#172

Post by crazygringo »

vagab0nd wrote: post #155

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…

Everything you describe, relational databases have been doing for decades. It's not unique to Postgres.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#173

Post by jamesfinlayson »

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…

99% of the time I've used Postgres it has been one user and one database. The one time I needed to create and configure a separate user with different permissions I remember it being thoroughly confusing and I think the DBA ended up doing it.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#174

Post by johnfn »

This is just AI slop. The best tell is how much AI loves tables. Look at "The Hidden Costs Add Up", where it literally just repeats "1" in the second column and "7" in the third column. No human would ever write a table like that.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#175

Post by BeetleB »

teraflop wrote: post #171
vagab0nd wrote: post #155

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…

I don't mean this as a knock on you, but your comment is a bit funny to me because it has very little to do with "modern" databases. What you're describing would probably have been equally possible with Postgres from 20 years ago, running on an average desktop PC from 20 years ago. (Or maybe even with SQLite from 20 years ago, for that matter.) Don't get me wrong, Postgres has gotten a lot better since 2006. But most…

[flagged]

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#176

Post by crazygringo »

anonzzzies wrote: post #170

It's 20xx just use sqlite. Almost no-one needs all that power; they sure do think they do, but really don't. And will never. SQLite + Duck is all you need even with a million visitors; when you need failover and scaling you need more, but that is a tiny fraction of all companies.

Huh?

SQLite is designed for application databases.

Postgres is designed for client-server.

It's not about "power" (what does that even mean?), it's about totally different design choices that are intended for different purposes. It's an architecture question, not a "power" or "visitors" question.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#177

Post by sbayeta »

avmich wrote: post #153

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…

Never heard about postgresql being written for hdds. Could you provide a source?

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#178

Post by kccqzy »

teraflop wrote: post #171
vagab0nd wrote: post #155

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…

I don't mean this as a knock on you, but your comment is a bit funny to me because it has very little to do with "modern" databases. What you're describing would probably have been equally possible with Postgres from 20 years ago, running on an average desktop PC from 20 years ago. (Or maybe even with SQLite from 20 years ago, for that matter.) Don't get me wrong, Postgres has gotten a lot better since 2006. But most…

The article actually points out a number of things only added after 2006, such as full-text search, JSONB, etc. Twenty years ago your full-text search option is just LIKE '%keyword%'. And it would be both slower than less effective than real full-text search. It clearly wasn’t “sub-100ms queries for virtually anything you want” like GP said.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#179

Post by fatbird »

TZubiri wrote: post #123
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…

Because it's not web scale, mongoDB is web scale

It's an older meme, but it checks out.

Re: It's 2026, Just Use Postgres

#180

Post by tempestn »

It really depends on your use case, doesn't it? I'd say, just use Postgres... until you have a reason not to. We used finally switched to Elasticsearch to power user search queries of our vehicle listings a few years ago, and found its speed, capabilities, and simplicity all significant improvements compared to the MariaDB-based search we'd been using previously. (Postgres's search features are likely better than MariaDB's, but I expect the comparison holds.) But that's the core of our product, and while not giant, our scale is significant. If you're just doing some basic search, you don't need it. (We managed for many years just fine without.)

I've never really regretted waiting to move to a new tool, if we already had something that works. Usually by doing so you can wait for the fads to die down and for something to become the de facto standard, which tends to save a lot of time and effort. But sometimes you can in fact get value out of a specialized tool, and then you might as well use it.

Huh, apparently this is controversial, based on the score ping-ponging up and down! I'm not really sure why though. Is it because of the reference to MariaDB?

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