4 ms·
PostgreSQL's MVCC is bad. So is everyone else's
- jhgb 3mo agoI'm surprised that Interbase/Firebird seems to be entirely omitted from this despite pioneering the MVCC approach.
- radimm 3mo agoOP here, I acctually had Firebird listed in some version of my draft, but had to make a natural cut somewhere.
- jhgb 3mo agoI see. I guess that makes sense, popularity-wise. I imagine the results were in the vicinity of PostgreSQL anyway, considering the similarity of approaches.
- radimm 3mo agoI had to make a cut - and that's also a reason why etcd got mentioned - focused on what most people today know.
- gjvc 3mo agobut that approach doesn't teach "most of your audience" something new that they didn't know before
- radimm 3mo agowell, let's say it depends what audince. This particular topic came as part of talks I deliver on Postgres internals and my webinars. Same story. Again and again. But I do get the point. Here the goal was - there's no perfect solution. Just characteristics to be aware of. Given the anti-LLM sentiment here I need to get offline and not get affected by it.
- bostik 3mo agoYour post has a trove of really good data. A lot of care, skill and attention must have gone into building that kind of expertise. When you then use an LLM to produce a post about it, that comes off as lazy. It wouldn't have to be that way, but sadly very (very!) often is.[0] Writing well is hard. Editing text to be readable is hard. Shortcutting that process is a signal to your audience that you do not appreciate their time. I use LLMs at work to generate client-facing analyses, but I never let a single version go out without doing at least some revising. LLMs love nothing more than to generate another token, which makes their output flowery and verbose. They overuse rule of three, without any of the underlying understanding why it works, let alone when (and how) to break it intentionally. I spotted the familiar "seesaw cadence" in your post but ploughed through because the content itself was still damn good. It's a shame that you did not put the same level of care into your writing that has gone into developing the technical expertise. Getting the post flagged because of the generic anti-LLM sentiment is undesirable but expected. HN doesn't have a way to mark posts as "sloppy writing but content-wise really good". It's the same kind of visceral reaction this crowd tends to have towards voice notes: "if you did not bother to condense your thoughts and instead dumped half an hour of rambling for me to dig through, why would I waste as long to listen to you not being able to say it clearly?" ["Podcast for none"] 0: The only exception I can point to is https://nearzero.software/p/warranty-void-if-regenerated https://nearzero.software/p/warranty-void-if-regenerated (discussed at the time in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47431237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47431237).
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- gtowey 3mo agoI'm conflicted with this article. It does pack a lot of good information in there, and it's a useful comparison of the core difference between PostgreSQL and MySQL. But it still contains a lot of LLM-isms which are off putting and make me want to stop reading when I see them.
- radimm 3mo agoOP here, thanks for the feedback. Just curious - anything specific? I spent long time getting to some sort of framework for my writing and being called LLM is my constant struggle. PS: I do use LLM for polish, etc.
- dbt00 3mo ago[dead]
- jdnier 3mo agoTells like "load-bearing" and "real", for example. "the heap's simplicity is load-bearing: once..." "It's a real thing" "It's a real trade-off" "The design buys real things" "it comes down to a real design choice" "That's a real critique"
- padjo 3mo agoI would say ignore them. It was well written an informative. Some people have just gone insane and see LLMs everywhere.
- gtowey 3mo agoThis is a case where "it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you" applies.
- jdnier 3mo agoReally, don't use LLM for polish; that's what wrecks it imho. People write idiosyncratically and that's a good thing. That's your voice.
- 3mo ago
- shayonj 3mo ago> Nothing was solved. The four questions got new answers, and the costs moved into the compactor. I have been meaning to write on this topic and in relation to LSM for a while. So, I appreciated that note on LSMs. There are no free ~lunches~ reads or writes.
- evanelias 3mo agoDupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49078196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49078196 which was posted a couple days ago, and then seemingly revived in second chance pool before getting flagged for obvious slop-tone.
- radimm 3mo agoOP, here thank you for comments and while I might not like it to be called LLM - I give up.
- plorkyeran 3mo ago[dead]