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Comment by treflop | Hacker News Reader

Well a database is just a binary file format with an API attached on.

Because having hundreds or thousands of concurrent file handles across a data center is kind of hard.

ok I get that, but at least our applications usually only have one thing (one thread of one process on one machine) operating on the database. So maybe it's just our silly usecase

It's a narrow use-case that doesn't cover RDMS. SQLite fits it though.

The first thing I did was ask why we don't use sqlite or at least postgres. The answer was that they are free and therefore we don't trust them. So Oracle it is. Which is bananas because our customers have to buy an oracle license, which is money that we don't get. Pretty wild

Sqlite is running on billions of devices and has a test suite with 100% branch coverage.

Only a fool would put more trust in Oracle.

> has a test suite with 100% branch coverage

Is actually even more than that, has 100% MC/DC coverage [1], which is something that is not easily achievable for most projects.

[1] https://www.sqlite.org/testing.html#:~:text=In%20this%20way%....

Your experience with databases was probably clouded by having to use Oracle.

It could be worse; there's always DB2...

> The answer was that they are free and therefore we don't trust them.

If you don’t mind a bit of unsolicited advice: run.

I mean you do a job because of the pay, not because you like the people or they are particularly competent. So it's a good gig for two years or so

I’ve found that surrounding myself with competent people - or better yet, people far better than me - has lead me to much better paying jobs.

It also makes you look less like a genius haha. Yeah maybe you're right. It wasn't the best choice in hindsight. But switching jobs is a relatively rare thing in Europe. You only can do that ever so often, so I'll have a bit of waiting to do

That's unusual. The rule is that you replicate the database consumers lots and lots of times.

Still then, a database will improve your data access, validate your data, and provide interop in case you need to use the file with different software.

It's also a very high quality serialization library, that replaces one of the most vulnerability-enabling layers of your software. (But then, I've just read you use Oracle, so maybe forget that one.)

I think it's important context that gets lost in so many tech conversations. Software engineering is a vast field covering almost every domain of human endeavor and they're all going to have different constraints. Some are technical and some are social. If you're working with 30 other engineers trying to marshal and unmarshal the same set of data for different purposes, it's really easy to tell them all "use SQL" instead of "here's the binary format invented by the guy who quit 7 years ago" even if that binary format was technically superior.

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