When did Postgres become cool? • Hacker News Board

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#71

Post by evanelias » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

duozerk wrote: post #68

sdsd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aha, I didn't know that. Looks like the marketing worked too well on me! In any case, the lie of drop-in compatibility at least I think led some people to look for alternatives that wouldn't be hampered by Oracle-era MySQL.

I didn't either until it bit me in the ass a few months back - often it's shitty proprietary software being only compatible with "genuine" (oracle) MySQL.

To be fair to vendors, it's increasingly difficult to maintain compatibility with both! Here's my very long rundown of the differences in tables/DDL alone: https://www.skeema.io/blog/2023/05/10/mysql-vs-mariadb-schem...

...and that doesn't even account for differences in global variables/configuration, SQL syntax, functions, replication, etc.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#72

Post by avereveard » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

About at the transition between oracle 11 and 12, wmvare was quickly becoming the next big thing, and oracle licensing was causing concerns I don't precisely recall with virtual deployments. In conjunction with orm reaching good maturity and postgres starting to catch up with benchmark it was the perfect storm.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#73

Post by lolive » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #34

Postgres was cool. Now SQLite is cool. In a few years .INI files will be cool. Fads gonna fad.

Parquet+S3 ;)

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#74

Post by duozerk » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

evanelias wrote: post #71

duozerk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't either until it bit me in the ass a few months back - often it's shitty proprietary software being only compatible with "genuine" (oracle) MySQL.

To be fair to vendors, it's increasingly difficult to maintain compatibility with both! Here's my very long rundown of the differences in tables/DDL alone: https://www.skeema.io/blog/2023/05/10/mysql-vs-mariadb-schem... ...and that doesn't even account for differences in global variables/configuration, SQL syntax, functions, replication, etc.

This is very informative, thank you.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#75

Post by Tabular-Iceberg » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

I don't know when, but I just came back to it after a stint of first MySQL and then MS SQL, and the first feeling I got is that here is a piece of software that seems to be made by people who just want to make my day better.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#76

Post by z3t4 » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

People like lightweight and simple databases. Maybe it became cool because a lack of development, making all other databases bloated in comparison?

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#77

Post by craigching » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 9:53 PM UTC

convolvatron wrote: post #69

jghn wrote: post #38

I remember in the early-mid aughts I evaluated Postgres vs MySQL. At the time the conventional wisdom seemed to be that Postgres was focusing more on robustness and MySQL more on functionality. And a lot of people seemed to prefer MySQL because of this. When I looped back around several years later Postgres had started to overcome MySQL. Conventional wisdom then was it was roughly at feature parity with MySQL but mor…

Postgres started in 1986. its was never less featureful than MySQL...in fact MySQL tried to get by without _transactions_ for the longest time. the fact that MySQL had more market/mindshare at any point is more of a testament about crowd mentality than anything about either of the two databases.

I remember maybe circa 2004 debating Postgres and mysql with a colleague. I told him to unplug the machine that was hosting his mysql instance. He did and corrupted his database. He said it didn't matter, he had backups, speed was more important :p This was before mysql had the innodb storage engine, after that it wasn't so bad. I have always stood by Postgres though, it's a fantastic piece of open source software.

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#78

Post by fjfuvucucuc » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #49

dymk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was way before that - it was when people got fed up with the string handling and implicit type casting stupidity of MySQL

I think a large amount of mysql was based on PHP applications with default mysql support.

[dead]

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#79

Post by pmarreck » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

Integrated fulltext search engine!

Upgrading is still too much of a pain though

Re: When did Postgres become cool?

#80

Post by sitzkrieg » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 10:02 PM UTC

eyphka wrote: post #36

fcatalan wrote: post #13

I run Postgres since about 2016. I used to run MySQL behind the same frontend app. I barely know anything about Postgres beyond installation for our use case, backup and recover. I used to know loads about obscure MySQL optimization techniques, fixing broken tables, fiddling with scary parameters and recovering from hair raising situations. I like my current state of ignorance.

Running Postgres in production since 2017. Some trivia required, but nothing like priest knowledge needed for MySQL. I love not having to be trivia king.

a wonderful side effect of well made software