I am a Rails developer at a medium-large size company. I’ve mostly worked at smaller companies. I’ve some exposure to other web development communities.
When it comes to databases, I have universally encountered the attitude that one should treat the database as a dumb data bucket. There is a *very* strong aversion to putting much of any business logic in the database. I encounter substantial aversion to have multiple applications access one database, or even the reverse: all abstraction should be at the application layer.
My best theory is that these communities developed at a time when Windows was more dominant, and just generally it was *significantly* easier to use MySQL than Postgres for many, particularly new, developers. And it is pretty reasonable to adopt an aversion to sophisticated use of the database in that case.
This attitude has just continued to today, even as many of them have switched to Postgres.
This is only a hypothesis. I am now officially researching the issue. I would be grateful for any wisdom from this community.
Aside: it is rare to find a situation in life or anywhere where one widely adopted thing is worse in *every way* than another thing, but this certainly was and largely still continues to be the case when one compares MySQL and Postgres. So why do folks continue to use MySQL? I find this mystifying.
When it comes to databases, I have universally encountered the attitude that one should treat the database as a dumb data bucket. There is a *very* strong aversion to putting much of any business logic in the database. I encounter substantial aversion to have multiple applications access one database, or even the reverse: all abstraction should be at the application layer.
My best theory is that these communities developed at a time when Windows was more dominant, and just generally it was *significantly* easier to use MySQL than Postgres for many, particularly new, developers. And it is pretty reasonable to adopt an aversion to sophisticated use of the database in that case.
This attitude has just continued to today, even as many of them have switched to Postgres.
This is only a hypothesis. I am now officially researching the issue. I would be grateful for any wisdom from this community.
Aside: it is rare to find a situation in life or anywhere where one widely adopted thing is worse in *every way* than another thing, but this certainly was and largely still continues to be the case when one compares MySQL and Postgres. So why do folks continue to use MySQL? I find this mystifying.
