Just Use Postgres

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53 points by amattn 20 hours ago on lobsters | 8 comments

diktomat | 14 hours ago

Similar, four weeks ago: https://lobste.rs/s/zqbq7k/it_s_2026_just_use_postgres

rplacy | 10 hours ago

interesting to see how we went from postgres vs mysql to just use postgres over last 20 years

I love postgres, it has been an absolute killer for every project I did

I'd also love to see articles "just use sqlite" because both are awesome!

cesarandreu | 7 hours ago

I wish more people would take SQLite seriously and take advantage of it for simplified deployment of low-usage services. I was recently setting up a self-hosted service and felt frustrated when I found out it required a separate container with MariaDB, especially since I imagine that most deployments aren't being used by more than a handful of users.

: hoistbypetard | 7 hours ago
I take SQLite seriously, and do use it, even in production, for some things. However, I've been bit by subtle differences between SQLite and postgres behavior a few times.

So if I think that postgres is my best bet for deploying anywhere for a particular application, I'm using it everywhere, even on my one-person dev installation. Adding postgres to my small deployments is easier than figuring out why a few numbers turn out wrong due to subtle differences in the interaction between my ORM and (SQLite vs Postgres).
: jmtd | 2 hours ago
From a user POV, I fully agree. And the difference in faff between an all-in-one container and needing orchestration (even docker compose) is huge.

But from a dev POV, SQLite basically leaves a lot of lock management to the application (relative to MySQL or Postgres) and that’s a major pain IMHO. If I wanted to get a thing up and going and focus on the application logic I’d resent having to manage that stuff as well.

weberc2 | 7 hours ago

If we have a “just use sqlite” article I would appreciate guidance on how to fix the defaults and how to transition to high availability.

zie | 7 hours ago

            "PRAGMA foreign_keys=ON;"
            "PRAGMA journal_mode = WAL;"
            "PRAGMA synchronous = NORMAL;"
            "PRAGMA busy_timeout = 5000;"
            "PRAGMA temp_store = MEMORY;"
            "PRAGMA mmap_size = 134217728;"
            "PRAGMA journal_size_limit = 67108864;"
            "PRAGMA cache_size = 2000;"

also turn on immediate mode so the busy_timeout works.

Sources:

parisosuch | 5 hours ago

I have been seeing a lot of these lately. This is my favorite: https://youjustneedpostgres.com/