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Why does everyone run ancient Postgres versions?

(neon.tech)
264 points davidgomes | 8 comments | 17 Oct 24 21:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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paulryanrogers ◴[17 Oct 24 23:59 UTC] No.41875055[source]▶
Upgrades are hard. There was no replication in the before times. The original block-level replication didn't work among different major versions. Slony was a painful workaround based on triggers that amplified writes.

Newer PostgreSQL versions are better. Yet still not quite as robust or easy as MySQL.

At a certain scale even MySQL upgrades can be painful. At least when you cannot spare more than a few minutes of downtime.

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api ◴[18 Oct 24 00:10 UTC] No.41875126[source]▶
I've always wondered why Postgres is so insanely popular. I mean it has some nice things like very powerful support for a very comprehensive subset of SQL functionality, but most apps don't need all that.

It really feels like early 1990s vintage Unix software. It's clunky and arcane and it's hard to feel confident doing anything complex with it.

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justin_oaks ◴[18 Oct 24 00:31 UTC] No.41875240[source]▶
> It really feels like early 1990s vintage Unix software. It's clunky and arcane and it's hard to feel confident doing anything complex with it.

How software "feels" is subjective. Can you be more specific?

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threeseed ◴[18 Oct 24 00:39 UTC] No.41875286[source]▶
The command line experience is old school style i.e. to show tables.

  \c database
  \dt
Versus:

  use database
  show tables
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fhdsgbbcaA ◴[18 Oct 24 00:50 UTC] No.41875350[source]▶
It’s also faster to type.
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1. eYrKEC2 ◴[18 Oct 24 03:30 UTC] No.41876111[source]▶
Not after you have to google, "What's the equivalent of `show tables` in postgres?", because the psql command names are completely arbitrary.
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2. fhdsgbbcaA ◴[18 Oct 24 03:44 UTC] No.41876166[source]▶
Which you need to do exactly once.
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3. kalleboo ◴[18 Oct 24 04:59 UTC] No.41876478[source]▶
I need to manually admin my database server maybe once every 2 years or so. Definitely not remembering them 2 years later.
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4. ◴[18 Oct 24 08:16 UTC] No.41877357[source]▶
5. Symbiote ◴[18 Oct 24 10:31 UTC] No.41878020[source]▶
They are clearly abbreviations.

\c is for connect.

\dt is for describe tables.

6. mxey ◴[18 Oct 24 11:58 UTC] No.41878561[source]▶
\? shows the help
7. ahoka ◴[18 Oct 24 22:32 UTC] No.41884086[source]▶
They kinda make sense if you consider that Postgres was not an SQL database in the beginning. Quirky though.
8. dventimi ◴[19 Oct 24 18:25 UTC] No.41889579{3}[source]▶
Sounds like a YP