Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18 • Hacker News Board

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#71

Post by wahnfrieden » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

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…

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

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#72

Post by wahnfrieden » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 4:00 PM UTC

heliumtera wrote: post #69

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…

Every single commit is Claude. No human expert involved. Would you trust your company database to an 25 dollars vibe session? Would you live in a 5 dollars building? Is there any difference from hand tailored suit, constructed to your measurements, and a 5 dollars t-shirt? Some people don't want to live in a five dollars world.

Agent authorship doesn't imply unreviewed or underspecified code

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#73

Post by wahnfrieden » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

Rovanion wrote: post #26

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…

You, is an interesting word to use given that you plagiarized it.

Please share the instant Postgres clones tool this copied! I'd love to try it

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#74

Post by pritambarhate » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

testdelacc1 wrote: post #42

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…

What an outrageously bad analogy. Everyone involved in that building put their professional reputations and licenses on the line. If that building collapses, the people involved will lose their livelihoods and be held criminally liable. Meanwhile this vibe coded nonsense is provided “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. We don’t even know if he read it before committing and pushing.

Even billion dollar software products have similar clauses, it doesn't have anything to do with vibe coding. To build and sell software no educational qualification is needed.

Quality of the software comes from testing. Humans and LLMs both make mistakes while coding.

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#75

Post by dabber » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

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 original person didn't say "I wrote this non-trivial software", they said "I built Velo".

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#76

Post by tracker1 » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

testdelacc1 wrote: post #42

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…

What an outrageously bad analogy. Everyone involved in that building put their professional reputations and licenses on the line. If that building collapses, the people involved will lose their livelihoods and be held criminally liable. Meanwhile this vibe coded nonsense is provided “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. We don’t even know if he read it before committing and pushing.

Depends on the building type/size/scale and jurisdiction. Modern tract homes are really varied, hit or miss and often don't see any negative outcomes for the builders in question for shoddy craftsmanship.

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#77

Post by ozgrakkurt » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

zX41ZdbW wrote: post #20

radarroark wrote: post #12

In theory, a database that uses immutable data structures (the hash array mapped trie popularized by Clojure) could allow instant clones on any filesystem, not just ZFS/XFS, and allow instant clones of any subset of the data, not just the entire db. I say "in theory" but I actually built this already so it's not just a theory. I never understood why there aren't more HAMT based databases.

This is typical for analytical databases, e.g., ClickHouse (which I'm the author of) uses immutable data parts, allowing table cloning: https://clickhouse.com/docs/sql-reference/statements/create/...

`ClickHouse (which I'm the author of)` just casually dropped that in the middle

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#78

Post by tracker1 » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 4:06 PM UTC

pritambarhate wrote: post #74

testdelacc1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an outrageously bad analogy. Everyone involved in that building put their professional reputations and licenses on the line. If that building collapses, the people involved will lose their livelihoods and be held criminally liable. Meanwhile this vibe coded nonsense is provided “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. We don’t even know if he read it before committing and pushing.

Even billion dollar software products have similar clauses, it doesn't have anything to do with vibe coding. To build and sell software no educational qualification is needed. Quality of the software comes from testing. Humans and LLMs both make mistakes while coding.

As an autodidact, and someone who has seen plenty of well educated idiots in the software profession, I'm happy there are no such requirements... I think a guild might be more reasonable than a professional org more akin to how it works for other groups (lawyers, doctors, etc).

There are of course projects that operate at higher development specification standards, often in the military or banking. This should be extended to all vehicles and invasive medical devices.

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#79

Post by heliumtera » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #72

heliumtera wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single commit is Claude. No human expert involved. Would you trust your company database to an 25 dollars vibe session? Would you live in a 5 dollars building? Is there any difference from hand tailored suit, constructed to your measurements, and a 5 dollars t-shirt? Some people don't want to live in a five dollars world.

Agent authorship doesn't imply unreviewed or underspecified code

Vibe coded means precisely that!

Re: Instant database clones with PostgreSQL 18

#80

Post by pritambarhate » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

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…

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 programmers more productive.

Programming is evolving. LLMs are just next generation programming tools. They make programmers more productive and in majority of the cases people and companies are going to use them more and more.