This doesn't match my experience at all. MySQL performance is highly variable, and it's incredibly easy to write simple queries that have truly abysmal performance.

Postgres on the other hand, has always tended towards making things work well (a step that mysql often skips), and then work quickly thereafter.

A lot of MySQL acolytes say Postgres is slow because, unlike MySQL, it doesn't ship with unsafe defaults. MySQL doesn't just allow you to do dumb things, it starts off with many of those settings as the defaults.

To me, the real problem is that people likebarrkel exist. He doesn't know what he's on about, but he likes MySQL. Most of wheat he wrote is flatly false, but he said it confidently. And he's employed someplace that probably uses MySQL.

MySQL got adoption for two reasons:

1) it used to be easier to install; and

2) it has unsafe defaults that mean if an idiot runs a benchmark, it wins.

That's it. That's how it won market. After that, it was network effects, and nothing else. MySQL is a turd. It requires substantial expertise to use MySQL because it is such an awful and dangerous tool. It slows you down as you get better. But most of the people who use it don't know any better, or (like barrkel) they spew nonsense that is the opposite of reality. So it wins.

Network effects suck.