People always criticize MySQL, then when asked what is the problem, they always mention the same thing about column length, which is just a default that can easily be changed and it's not even the default anymore for years.
In 1998, MySQL was appealing because it was very fast on simple queries and didn’t cost a further. Until the early 2010s it had a better replication story than Postgres. But by now it’s often slower than Postgres on my apps, feature poor, and you don’t notice how many limitations you’ve internalized until you realize it’s been years since you had to repair or kludge around a MySQL quirk.