What’s so exciting about Postgres? • Hacker News Board

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#31

Post by dfee » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #19

Animats wrote: post #11

Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work . The main reason webcrap works is because the databases underneath work. If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably.

It is often downvoted to talk about the "javascript crowd" on HN, but I've worked in software industry long enough to unequivocally and with certainty say that it totally lives up to the cliches. It never gets old to scold people that are not serious, disciplined and principled in their endeavors that affect the rest of the world. Javascript community absolutely deserves the avalanche of criticisms they face. It is t…

That’s quite the perspective.

It’s a big enough world where you don’t have to interact with every technology that exists, but this is one of the more prevalent ones - and you might find it useful to make peace with that community.

Anyway, good luck out there.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#32

Post by systemvoltage » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

axegon_ wrote: post #27

Apart from being the most mature relational database, I would argue the code that runs it. It's pure poetry. I am yet to see code this clean anywhere. Just opening any source code file at random[1] will show you exactly what I mean. [1] https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend...

Let's not get carried away. It is very much debatable which database is "most mature".

Here is some discussions about how Postgres compares with Oracle DB (if $ is not an issue), it is often said that Postgres is a Cessna whereas Oracle DB is like a Fighter Jet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24582937

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#33

Post by axegon_ » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #32

axegon_ wrote: post #27

Apart from being the most mature relational database, I would argue the code that runs it. It's pure poetry. I am yet to see code this clean anywhere. Just opening any source code file at random[1] will show you exactly what I mean. [1] https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend...

Let's not get carried away. It is very much debatable which database is "most mature". Here is some discussions about how Postgres compares with Oracle DB (if $ is not an issue), it is often said that Postgres is a Cessna whereas Oracle DB is like a Fighter Jet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24582937

I've never had the opportunity to test Oracle DB at large, just some minor playing around with 12c many many years ago so I don't have an accurate view. That said, given my experience with other Oracle products and the fighter jet analogy... De omnibus dibutandum est...

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#34

Post by anonymous326 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #17

anonymous324 wrote: post #16

PostgreSQL isn't exciting. It's boring, with roots in the Berkeley Ingress project from the mid 80s. Which is why 10 years ago, so many HNers went with trendy NoSQL data stores instead, even though they lost data. Data loss is very exciting, and PostgreSQL is very boring. This preference for what's exciting and trendy over what's old and proven is a large reason why so much software today sucks.

That seems unfair. NoSQL was trying out new ideas in data storage. It was exciting to try out new or re-imagined core concepts, and some of those young projects had teething issues. But several are still around and remain popular, but they're popular for certain niches they excel at (and those niches were largely discovered through trial and error). In the SQL-sphere a lot of people skipped Postgres because MySQL had…

> NoSQL was trying out new ideas in data storage

Was it? Or was it just rehashing old ideas made obsolete by relational databases?

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Information_Management_Sys...

> Initial release 1966; 54 years ago

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:NoSQL

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#35

Post by shay_ker » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

anarazel wrote: post #25

shay_ker wrote: post #20

Surprised they didn't cover transaction id wraparound, which has caused more than a few public outages at scale. IIRC some Postgres folks have a plan to fix it? Maybe Craig knows?

> Surprised they didn't cover transaction id wraparound, which has caused more than a few public outages at scale. There have been some significant improvements in the last couple years - most importantly the introduction of the freeze map in 9.6. But also quite a sprinkling of other incremental improvements. It can obviously still be a problem, but it's not as pronounced as it once was.

can you elaborate?

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#36

Post by treeman79 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #17

anonymous324 wrote: post #16

PostgreSQL isn't exciting. It's boring, with roots in the Berkeley Ingress project from the mid 80s. Which is why 10 years ago, so many HNers went with trendy NoSQL data stores instead, even though they lost data. Data loss is very exciting, and PostgreSQL is very boring. This preference for what's exciting and trendy over what's old and proven is a large reason why so much software today sucks.

That seems unfair. NoSQL was trying out new ideas in data storage. It was exciting to try out new or re-imagined core concepts, and some of those young projects had teething issues. But several are still around and remain popular, but they're popular for certain niches they excel at (and those niches were largely discovered through trial and error). In the SQL-sphere a lot of people skipped Postgres because MySQL had…

MySQL was also a lot faster in the early days.

Plus it “just worked” not sanely mind you. But you had a lot less problems with type mismatches, up/downcast, etc. Well unless you wanted quality data. But back then we were just happy that it didn’t bother us with “minor” details.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#37

Post by kulig » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

hashtagmarkup wrote: post #23

Animats wrote: post #11

Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work . The main reason webcrap works is because the databases underneath work. If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably.

> If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably. Wait until this guy learns what the JS in "json" column types means, and how the largest webcrap sites rely on them for persistence.

Json is just a format. There are trillions of formats that work just as well as json.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#38

Post by baybal2 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #11

Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work . The main reason webcrap works is because the databases underneath work. If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably.

PG steamrolls every other general purpose database, and has tons of extensions, and frontends so you can use it in any database paradigm.

With 30m minutes of time, you can turn it into a document db, log/time series db, columnar, graph, key value, whatever

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#39

Post by noir_lord » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #19

Animats wrote: post #11

Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work . The main reason webcrap works is because the databases underneath work. If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably.

It is often downvoted to talk about the "javascript crowd" on HN, but I've worked in software industry long enough to unequivocally and with certainty say that it totally lives up to the cliches. It never gets old to scold people that are not serious, disciplined and principled in their endeavors that affect the rest of the world. Javascript community absolutely deserves the avalanche of criticisms they face. It is t…

I'm seeing this in action now, the difference between the backend code and the frontend code is stark and the backend code isn't up to my standard either (and my standards aren't that high, I know I'm merely competent for many places).

It just seems to be the nature of the web side of things, lots of sloppiness.

The devs are smart enough, they just don't think and it shows.

That or they use something but clearly don't understand the thing they are using.

I replaced nearly 500 lines of code with ~60 by taking a bunch of massive conditonals re-ordering them then extracting them into methods and returning on the simple case.

This isn't voodoo, you have to work harder and remember more to do it the wrong way.

Also comments, they don't seem to understand you document why you did the thing, not what you did, what you did is in the code, I don't trust your comments to tell me what you did, I want to know why you did it.

That and general documentation (cross link stuff, link at the top of the class to the documentation in the wiki, update the documentation when you get a ticket that changes the behaviour, write the high level flow in plain english a 10 year old could understand).

rant over.

I actually like my job, the people are lovely and the work is interesting its just frustrating when an ounce of thought saves a pound of cure.

Re: What’s so exciting about Postgres?

#40

Post by soneca » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #19

Animats wrote: post #11

Databases shouldn't be exciting. They should just work . The main reason webcrap works is because the databases underneath work. If the Javascript crowd had to manage data storage, nothing persistent would work reliably.

It is often downvoted to talk about the "javascript crowd" on HN, but I've worked in software industry long enough to unequivocally and with certainty say that it totally lives up to the cliches. It never gets old to scold people that are not serious, disciplined and principled in their endeavors that affect the rest of the world. Javascript community absolutely deserves the avalanche of criticisms they face. It is t…

Please explain further what negative characteristics do you apply to the ”js crowd“ as a whole.

As a developer who only develops in JavaScript, I feel personally attacked by your post, so I would appreciate if your attack could be more specific to the point of being constructive or at least informative.