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from-nibly05/15/20255 repliesview on HN

Feels like postgres is always the answer. I mean like there's gotta be some edge case somewhere where postgres just can't begin to compete with other more specialized database but I'd think that going from postgres to something else is much easier than the other way around.


Replies

graealex05/15/2025

It's not like PostgreSQL hasn't been in development for close to 30 years, covering basically every use case imaginable just through millions of deployments.

In addition, SQL in itself is a proven technology. The reality is that most problems you might think about solving with specialized databases (Big Data TM etc) could probably easily be solved with your run-of-the-mill RDBMS anyway, if more than five minutes are spent on designing the schema. It's extremely versatile, despite just being one layer above key-value storage.

99990000099905/15/2025

Depends.

If you want to fully embrace the vibe tables are difficult.

Even before LLMs, I was at a certain company that preferred MongoDB so we didn’t need migrations.

Sometimes you don’t care about data structure and you just want to toss something up there and worry about it later.

Postgres is the best answer if you have a solid team and you know what you’re doing.

If you want to ride solo and get something done fast, Firebase and its NoSQL cousins might be easier .

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jacobsenscott05/15/2025

PG requires a lot of expertise to keep running when you get to a billion rows or massive ingest. It can do it, but it doesn't just do it out of box running the defaults.

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mdaniel05/15/2025

There's a gist that shows up in these threads https://gist.github.com/cpursley/c8fb81fe8a7e5df038158bdfe0f...

But while digging that up it seems there is one with more colors: https://postgresforeverything.com/

And one for the AI crowd https://github.com/dannybellion/postgres-is-all-you-need#pos...

coolcase05/15/2025

I hear MySQL can be better for some workloads?

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