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Why does everyone run ancient Postgres versions?

(neon.tech)
264 points davidgomes | 2 comments | 17 Oct 24 21:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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arkh ◴[18 Oct 24 08:42 UTC] No.41877469[source]▶
Having to tinker with pg_hba.conf files on the server so manage how users can connect.
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1. paulryanrogers ◴[18 Oct 24 11:29 UTC] No.41878377[source]▶
I'd agree that is annoying yet usually just a one off task, unless you really want different IP allowlists per user.
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2. Tostino ◴[18 Oct 24 15:49 UTC] No.41880521[source]▶
In complex environments it is not just a one off task. I dealt with it by automating my infrastructure with ansible, but without some tooling it sucks.