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I guess it's simple: they have world-class engineers behind it. Of the smartest people in tech, that truly understand their craft. That, and a broad, open commu

I guess it's simple: they have world-class engineers behind it. Of the smartest people in tech, that truly understand their craft. That, and a broad, open community.

Coding_Cat 8y ago
And probably (because of that) a very robust codebase-base. Adding a JIT to a 'textual query'->'results' pipeline is a lot easier if you took the effort to silo off each individual step than it is when you consider 'text'->'result' to be one fixed step. Even if the initial partioning is a lot of work. (pure speculation, I haven't seen their code yet, but I am curious now).
abledon 8y ago
You gotta be insanely good and enjoy your craft to enjoy writing low level DB code for open source lol
- simias 8y ago
  DBs might not be glamorous but I'm sure there are many very interesting problems to solve when developing them. Of course on such a large, old project there's got to be a lot of tedious maintenance work as well, but that's true for all software in my experience. It's often a conversation I have with people looking to get into software development. Often they'll aim for video games or something like that but I often warn them that it might not be nearly as cool as they imagine. You're more likely to end up scripting crappy menu systems than being the next Carmack. On the other hand some of the most interesting pieces of software I've written were for very unsexy industrial applications. And I actually have good working conditions unlike people working in the videogame industry apparently.
  - pizza234 8y ago
    Often they'll aim for video games or something like that but I often warn them that it might not be nearly as cool as they imagine. You're more likely to end up scripting crappy menu systems than being the next Carmack. Interestingly, Carmack himself said if he wouldn't write videogames, he would work on databases. I can't find the exact quote, but here's a similar reference: I enjoy lots of different areas of it [programming]... I'm taking a great deal of enjoyment writing device drivers for Linux. I could also be having a good time writing a database manager or something because there are always interesting problems.
    - Twisell 8y ago
      And I recently had mindblowing moment when I realized that Civilization VI is heavily SQL based. I didn’t have time to dive into it but the Graphical UI is basically an interface to visualize and update a database. Seems afterwards quite logical and clever considering the turn based gameplay.
      - abledon 8y ago
        Now just design a civ style game with sql command-line interface but fancy autocomplete bright warcarft3 colors and a fun storyline . Have a generation of gamers learn sql
- jeltz 8y ago
  It varies a lot. Many parts of the code base are very accessible and easy to modify for almost anyone, while some parts, especially the query planner, contain some of the most advanced code I have worked with.
- pgaddict 8y ago
  I'm not sure I understand the "open source" part - it's not as if we do it for free. I'd say for most of the senior PostgreSQL engineers / contributors it's part of their paid jobs. We either work for companies providing various PostgreSQL services, or for companies using PostgreSQL. We might do the same type of work on a proprietary database, but that would lack the community/cooperation aspect of the project. Of course, enjoying the craft is somewhat natural in both cases. And yes, it's a bit scary how smart some of the contributors are.

I guess it's simple: they have world-class engineers behind it. Of the smartest people in tech, that truly understand their craft. That, and a broad, open community.

Coding_Cat 8y ago

And probably (because of that) a very robust codebase-base. Adding a JIT to a 'textual query'->'results' pipeline is a lot easier if you took the effort to silo off each individual step than it is when you consider 'text'->'result' to be one fixed step. Even if the initial partioning is a lot of work. (pure speculation, I haven't seen their code yet, but I am curious now).

abledon 8y ago

You gotta be insanely good and enjoy your craft to enjoy writing low level DB code for open source lol

simias 8y ago
DBs might not be glamorous but I'm sure there are many very interesting problems to solve when developing them. Of course on such a large, old project there's got to be a lot of tedious maintenance work as well, but that's true for all software in my experience. It's often a conversation I have with people looking to get into software development. Often they'll aim for video games or something like that but I often warn them that it might not be nearly as cool as they imagine. You're more likely to end up scripting crappy menu systems than being the next Carmack. On the other hand some of the most interesting pieces of software I've written were for very unsexy industrial applications. And I actually have good working conditions unlike people working in the videogame industry apparently.
- pizza234 8y ago
  Often they'll aim for video games or something like that but I often warn them that it might not be nearly as cool as they imagine. You're more likely to end up scripting crappy menu systems than being the next Carmack. Interestingly, Carmack himself said if he wouldn't write videogames, he would work on databases. I can't find the exact quote, but here's a similar reference: I enjoy lots of different areas of it [programming]... I'm taking a great deal of enjoyment writing device drivers for Linux. I could also be having a good time writing a database manager or something because there are always interesting problems.
  - Twisell 8y ago
    And I recently had mindblowing moment when I realized that Civilization VI is heavily SQL based. I didn’t have time to dive into it but the Graphical UI is basically an interface to visualize and update a database. Seems afterwards quite logical and clever considering the turn based gameplay.
    - abledon 8y ago
      Now just design a civ style game with sql command-line interface but fancy autocomplete bright warcarft3 colors and a fun storyline . Have a generation of gamers learn sql
jeltz 8y ago
It varies a lot. Many parts of the code base are very accessible and easy to modify for almost anyone, while some parts, especially the query planner, contain some of the most advanced code I have worked with.
pgaddict 8y ago
I'm not sure I understand the "open source" part - it's not as if we do it for free. I'd say for most of the senior PostgreSQL engineers / contributors it's part of their paid jobs. We either work for companies providing various PostgreSQL services, or for companies using PostgreSQL. We might do the same type of work on a proprietary database, but that would lack the community/cooperation aspect of the project. Of course, enjoying the craft is somewhat natural in both cases. And yes, it's a bit scary how smart some of the contributors are.