The real insight here is recognizing when network latency is your bottleneck. For many workloads, even a mediocre local database beats a great remote one. The question isn't "which database is best" but "does my architecture need to cross network boundaries at all?"

(author here) yes 100% this. This was never mean't to be a SQLite vs Postgres article per say, more about the fundamental limitations of the network databases in some contexts. Admittedly, at times I felt I struggle to convey this in the article.

Sure. Now keep everything in memory and use redis or memcache. Easy to get performance if you change the rules.