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Fashionable 20 years ago but thankfully everyone who had that bee in their bonnet seems to have retired.

by dboreham 2y ago

Kinrany 2y ago
It'll make a comeback once stored procedures can be easily written in real programming languages using standard tools.
- sgarland 2y ago
  You already can [0]. C, PL/Perl, PL/Python, and PL/Tcl exist out of the box, in addition to PL/pgSQL, which I assume you were implying isn’t a “real programming language.” [0]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/server-programming.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/server-programming.h...
  - Kinrany 2y ago
    Sure, even PL/Rust is available. But what does the deployment pipeline look like, from version control to a live instance?
    - sgarland 2y ago
      That is described in the link, in section 36.18, albeit for C. If you have another language, i assume you get to figure out how to make it work. [0]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/extend-pgxs.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/extend-pgxs.html
  - fulafel 2y ago
    Few people seem to be using these. At a guess the dev experience is not great.
    - sgarland 2y ago
      Frankly, I think devs need to stop being such primmadonnas about DX. Not everything has a slick UI that does most of the work for you. Take Linux, for example: you have to email your PR as a patch, inline as plaintext to a mailing list. Yet somehow, they manage, and it had an incredibly active community.
      - fulafel 2y ago
        Alternative programming languages are all about DX. PL/pgsql is turing complete after all.
        sgarland 2y ago
        It is indeed, but I’ll be the first to admit it’s a bit clunky to use beyond a few variables and actions. Sorry for snapping. I’m exhausted with devs complaining that some older and well-established piece of tech (Postgres, HAProxy, nginx to name a few) isn’t easy enough to use, and then using something demonstrably worse, or writing their own terrible version of it. Work trauma.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
tomnipotent 2y ago
I think it's a perfectly fine approach in 2025 now that that CI/CD have proliferated and you're less likely to run into a human DBA arbitrarily blocking deployments. It was always the feudal lord mentality of DB operations that made relying so much on stored procedures undesirable.

Fashionable 20 years ago but thankfully everyone who had that bee in their bonnet seems to have retired.

Kinrany 2y ago

It'll make a comeback once stored procedures can be easily written in real programming languages using standard tools.

sgarland 2y ago
You already can [0]. C, PL/Perl, PL/Python, and PL/Tcl exist out of the box, in addition to PL/pgSQL, which I assume you were implying isn’t a “real programming language.” [0]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/server-programming.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/server-programming.h...
- Kinrany 2y ago
  Sure, even PL/Rust is available. But what does the deployment pipeline look like, from version control to a live instance?
  - sgarland 2y ago
    That is described in the link, in section 36.18, albeit for C. If you have another language, i assume you get to figure out how to make it work. [0]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/extend-pgxs.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/extend-pgxs.html
- fulafel 2y ago
  Few people seem to be using these. At a guess the dev experience is not great.
  - sgarland 2y ago
    Frankly, I think devs need to stop being such primmadonnas about DX. Not everything has a slick UI that does most of the work for you. Take Linux, for example: you have to email your PR as a patch, inline as plaintext to a mailing list. Yet somehow, they manage, and it had an incredibly active community.
    - fulafel 2y ago
      Alternative programming languages are all about DX. PL/pgsql is turing complete after all.
      - sgarland 2y ago
        It is indeed, but I’ll be the first to admit it’s a bit clunky to use beyond a few variables and actions. Sorry for snapping. I’m exhausted with devs complaining that some older and well-established piece of tech (Postgres, HAProxy, nginx to name a few) isn’t easy enough to use, and then using something demonstrably worse, or writing their own terrible version of it. Work trauma.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

tomnipotent 2y ago

I think it's a perfectly fine approach in 2025 now that that CI/CD have proliferated and you're less likely to run into a human DBA arbitrarily blocking deployments. It was always the feudal lord mentality of DB operations that made relying so much on stored procedures undesirable.