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Noob here - how do people usually assess DBs to one another? Why should I use this say over DynamoDB?

Given concrete requirements or use cases it would be easier to compare given DB solutions, but when people are scoping something for say a new project, or a personal project (flexible requirements / motivation), how does that usually go down? If anyone has first hand experience on this :)

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If your spec is entirely up in the air, you can start by replicating the examples. Lack of meaningful examples and/or in-depth documentation is the first red flag. You can also scan the reported issues to see if others are having trouble with core features, which is a sign of project immaturity.

Either way, it always helps to have some basic use case in mind. Bigger than "Hello, World" and smaller than a MVP. The outcome of any evaluation will heavily depend on whether it's a good fit for what you're trying to achieve.

Great point on being able to use motivating examples and testing out how user friendly the documentation and "getting started" is.

Not sure if relevant, but for me, when I want to develop quickly and reliably, I go with mySQL, because that's what I know best.

Then when I'm motivated, and find a DB that's really interesting, I force myself to use it (like couchDB) in order to learn my way around it.

That's how I decide what to use.

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