Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by nindalf | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

nindalf

The only one in common in both lists is Postgres. Insane longevity.

View on HN

I like to joke and say that it is the Postgres Cinematic universe

Yep, obligatory Postgres Is Enough listicle:

https://gist.github.com/cpursley/c8fb81fe8a7e5df038158bdfe0f...

(most of the time, at least)

SQL Server and Oracle too but not being open source is a big minus.

I genuinely wonder why people use SQL Server, is it just because of the active directory integration? Just because microsoft says so?

I mean, its a lot more expensive than Postgres for very very little benefit. Like what exactly is the value proposition? Is it saving developer time? faster? I guess none of those

Back in the day (2000s) if you were a .NET shop it made sense as the providers for anything else were not as good. And probably you are more likely to get those skills over Postgres. And Postgres was a lot more early.

These days a I am not so sure what the case would be other than legacy or very occasionally some feature only SQL Server has. AD would be a big one.

20 years ago, I was a massive Postgres fan and I still am, but I bought and used SQL server for production systems - it was better (particularly in replication), and more importantly had better support as in being on the phone with the lead dev type support.

Today I have no idea about SQL server but if the support is as good today as it was back then it can be worth it.

Yeah and only 6 years ago, which is nothing in the span life databases historically. It's not like DBs are a new tech.

Making a decision on DB is somewhat foundational for a lot of system architecture, in that you expect to be able to use it for years. It is not like some UI framework you toss out every 18 months.

So the benefits of the new hyped thing may be outweighed by the unknowns & risk of flaming out.

This is the kind of hype cycle that gives me pause when a new hot thing like DuckDB which actually ticks a TON of boxes for me, but has attracted some of the usual suspects in my work network that I consider to be contra signals.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com