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“Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

tech.zalando.com

71–80 of 140 posts

Re: “Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

#71
post #40
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The backslash commands are way better than having to type out SHOW TABLES; or SHOW DATABASES;, or CONNECT DATABASE X. All I have to do is \dt or \c x. It's so much better. Can't remember them? Just do \?.

Thats like trying to say emacs is easier than eclipse. Sure it may be more efficient once you are used to it, but its not more intuitive.

eclipse and intuitive shouldn't ever be used in the same sentence. emacs ditto, but calling one more intuitive from another is missing the point by about 1 AU.

Re: “Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

#72
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, their website still sucks in the same ways it did 3 years ago. It boggles the mind. They have a huge selection, expensive advertising campaigns and lenient shipping & return policies, fueled by huge sums of money, so they have a huge market share. Its nice, but execution is merely decent imho.

Try a rewrite at a company with more than 100 employees... cf http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

No need to rewrite anything - all they need are a few UI improvements. Its not like their backend is MongoDB or something. ^_^

Re: “Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

#73
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's used to MySQL, I keep trying to use PostgreSQL (better standards compliance, better behaviour in the face of bad data) - and I keep going back. The psql interface is awkward (too many magic backslash commands to memorize instead of SHOW CREATE TABLE) and always feels slightly laggy somehow.

Count another vote for the pgadmin. I hate the backslash commands of postgres, about as much as I hate the show commands of mysql (what's not nearly as much as I hate the oracle introspection tools). Why couldn't SQL standardize database introspection?

This whole thread makes me happy to be a SQL Server user, where the UI tools are standard and robust.

90% of the time, I don't need to remember any special commands for introspecting and since it's on Windows - I can use the keyboard to navigate the entire UI with ease. When I write SQL, I get glorious Intellisense (that's autocomplete to you) for every single object (edit: and command) in the db.

Re: “Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

#74
post #39

I had a job interview at Zalando a while ago, and apart from the huge bunch of bananas at the entrance to the developer's den, the one thing I remember most about was the fact that apparently they're using stored procedures for basically any database transaction. Which is probably a more unorthodox use of databases these days, at least for Postgres (I've heard it was more common for SQL Server and I once had the ques…

Even during the talk it was even mentioned. "Stored procedures are the core our success"

He also mentioned that Zelando does 100 data model (schema?) changes per week, and that senior dev make code changes without code review.

Re: “Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

#75
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ctrl-c kills the whole shell. great, but not what I expect. That is actually exactly what you should expect. SIGINT cancels most things you run in the CLI. Interrupt a ping because you forgot a count parameter? Ctrl+C Honestly, the reason I don't use Postgres has nothing to do with the CLI and everything to do with the ecosystem for Multi-Master being inferior to Galera. But yeah, I'm happy with mysql-cli as well a…

Ping isn't a CLI, its a single command that expects no further input. A database shell is more like bash than ping. And Ctrl-C does not exit out of bash.

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Re: “Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

#76
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A t-shirt for 1.75 € is so cheap that it's practically guaranteed to have been manufactured in dangerous conditions in a place like Bangladesh or Ethiopia. Big brands like Adidas or Under Armour don't have a clean track record either, but at least they are somewhat accountable to consumers because their #1 asset is their reputation. To fix global trade, it's better to do a bit of research into what kind of company yo…

You mean the money is actually going to poor people? Sounds like a plus to me.

Certainly not. The ultra-cheap stuff is cheap throughout the production pipeline. Costs are cut wherever possible: wages, tools, work environment, materials, packaging...

The "poor people" won't benefit from most of the branded product's premium, of course. But it's more likely that it's been produced by a subcontractor that at least respects local laws like minimum wage, construction standards and regulations concerning toxic materials.

Re: “Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

#77
post #39

I had a job interview at Zalando a while ago, and apart from the huge bunch of bananas at the entrance to the developer's den, the one thing I remember most about was the fact that apparently they're using stored procedures for basically any database transaction. Which is probably a more unorthodox use of databases these days, at least for Postgres (I've heard it was more common for SQL Server and I once had the ques…

"Stored procedures for everything" is a bit unorthodox, but its probably a better practice that "base tables for everything" (which seems to be the common trend these days), and is pretty much the closest real practice to the "views for everything" that was long the ideal for decoupling decoupling the interface that each component using the DB saw from the underlying data model (an ideal that was, when it was made, often unachievable because of each RDBMS had different limitations on what you could do with views, particularly on the update side.)

Though, with modern PostgreSQL, views-for-everything would probably work at least as well as stored-procs-for-everything.

Re: “Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't already checkout pgadmin-3, I mostly live in the cli but if I need to do something complex or write a large query I often jump into pgadmin as it's display and proper editor are excellent!. Prefer it to MySQL Workbench even which I liked.

I've recently made the switch to postgres, and then I found pgadmin3, and I'm really feeling some pain. For instance, the "explain query" visualization is great, and very helpful, but there's no way I can find to zoom out, at all . And that window doesn't support mouse scrolling. And there's no way to export the visualization somewhere else. So when I'm trying to figure out why a very, very large query is running slo…

It's not graphical, but pasting the explain analyze output into http://explain.depesz.com/ helps me see where postgres is spending most of its time.

Re: “Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

#79
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the money is actually going to poor people? Sounds like a plus to me.

Certainly not. The ultra-cheap stuff is cheap throughout the production pipeline. Costs are cut wherever possible: wages, tools, work environment, materials, packaging... The "poor people" won't benefit from most of the branded product's premium, of course. But it's more likely that it's been produced by a subcontractor that at least respects local laws like minimum wage, construction standards and regulations concer…

Being blunt, how do we know? For example, when the buildings collapsed back in 2013, the discount chains selling unbranded clothes like Primark and Loblaw pledge to offer compensation, while Benneton tried to hide their relationship with the manufacturer.

As it ever been studied if the work conditions of the workers making branded stuff are generally better than their counterparts working on cheaper clothes?

Re: “Fashion Is Hard. PostgreSQL Is Easy” [video]

#80
post #63
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the first person I read saying they like the mysql cli. Ctrl-c kills the whole shell. great, but not what I expect. Want to fix a small typo in your big query? In psql you can just edit your last command in your $EDITOR. Useful (but not perfect) autocomplete is also not in mysql.

In MySQL type \e and you can edit your query just the same. https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/mysql-commands.html

I love that earlier up in this same thread people are complaining about the magic \x sequences in postgres and this is how you do query edits in the mysql cli :)

I've got my biases, but whenever something like this comes up, I just make some popcorn and enjoy the show.

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