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Stephan Schmidt

Just Use Postgres for Everything

How to reduce complexity and move faster


Welcome HN. Technology is about tradeoffs. Using Postgres for
everything is a tradeoff. Yes use the right tool for the job. Helping
dozens of startups I have seen many more people overcomplicate setups
than companies that use tools that are too simple for the job. If you
have 1M+ customers, and you need Kafka, go ahead. If you have more
systems than developers, just use Postgres. Thanks to Hugo and
BunnyCDN for keeping the page fast. PS: Postgres for everything
doesn't mean one server for everything ;-)

TLDR; just use Postgres for everything.

We have invited complexity through the door. But it will not leave as
easily.

Complexity

There is Radical Simplicity though.

One way to simplify your stack and reduce the moving parts, speed up
development, lower the risk and deliver more features in your startup
is "Use Postgres for everything". Postgres can replace - up to
millions of users - many backend technologies, Kafka, RabbitMQ, Mongo
and Redis among them.

Use Postgres for caching instead of Redis with UNLOGGED tables and
TEXT as a JSON data type. Use stored procedures to add and enforce an
expiry date for the data just like in Redis.

Use Postgres as a message queue with SKIP LOCKED instead of Kafka (if
you only need a message queue).

Use Postgres with TimescaleDB as a data warehouse.

Use Postgres with JSONB to store Json documents in a database, search
and index them - instead of Mongo.

Use Postgres for Fulltext Search instead of Elastic.

Use Postgres to generate JSON in the database, write no server side
code and directly give it to the API.

Use Postgres with a GraphQL adapter to deliver GraphQL if needed.

There I've said it, just use Postgres for everything.

About Stephan

As a CTO, Interim CTO, CTO Coach - and developer - Stephan has seen
many technology departments in fast-growing startups. As a kid he
taught himself coding in a department store around 1981 because he
wanted to write video games. Stephan studied computer science with
distributed systems and artificial intelligence at the University of
Ulm. He also studied Philosophy. When the internet came to Germany in
the 90 he worked as the first coder in several startups. He has
founded a VC funded startup, worked in VC funded, fast growing
startups with architecture, processes and growth challenges, worked
as a manager for ImmoScout and as a CTO of an eBay Inc. company.
After his wife successfully sold her startup they moved to the sea
and Stephan took up CTO coaching. You can find him on LinkedIn, on 
Mastodon or on Twitter @KingOfCoders

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