I've been thinking about the need for easier to use databases for a long time. I previously started a company based on selling database software, so I've seen a lot of problems in the space. I honestly most databases are too hard to use and there's been no major improvements here in the last few decades.

Take Postgres. You write code in SQL, a programming language unlike any other mainstream programming language. Instead of writing code with for loops and if statements, you write it with joins and where clauses. On top of that, Postgres has a "magical query optimizer" that takes your SQL and figures out how to execute your query. Unless you have a good understanding of indexes and how they impact the query optimizer, you'll have a hard time getting Postgres to be fast. I still regularly say WTF when optimizing Postgres queries even though I've been doing it for years. That's not to mention there's tons of database specific terminology like tables, rows, schema, etc, that you have to learn before you can become an effect user of Postgres.

As much as HN likes to bash it, I think Mongo has done the best job of creating an easy to use database. With Mongo, you can store JSON and you can pull JSON out. Of course, I would never use Mongo personally.

I'm hoping that Supabase is able to bring about the next-phase of databases by not just making it possible to make a database fast, but by making it easy to do so.