| ▲ | mdasen 2 days ago | |
Popularity can mean multiple things. Are we talking about how frequently a database is used or how frequently a database is chosen for new projects? MySQL will always be very popular because some very popular things use it like WordPress. It does feel like a lot of the momentum has shifted to PostgreSQL recently. You even see it in terms of what companies are choosing for compatibility. Google has a lot more MySQL work historically, but when they created a compatibility interface for Cloud Spanner, they went with PostgreSQL. ClickHouse went with PostgreSQL. More that I'm forgetting at the moment. It used to be that everyone tried for MySQL wire compatibility, but that doesn't feel like what's happening now. If MySQL is making you happy, great. But there has certainly been a shift toward PostgreSQL. MySQL will continue to be one of the most used databases just as PHP will remain one of the most used programming languages. There's a lot of stuff already built with those things. I think most metrics would say that PHP is more widely deployed than NodeJS, but I think it'd be hard to argue that PHP is what the developer community is excited about. Even search here on HN. In the past year, 4 MySQL stories with over 100 point compared to 28 PostgreSQL stories with over 100 points (and zero MariaDB stories above 100 points and 42 SQLite). What are we talking about here on HN? Not nearly as frequently MySQL - we're talking about SQLite and PostgreSQL. That's not to say that MySQL doesn't work great for you or that it doesn't have a large installed base, but it isn't where our mindshare is about the future. | ||
| ▲ | evanelias 2 days ago | parent [-] | |
> ClickHouse went with PostgreSQL. What do you mean by this? AFAIK they added MySQL wire protocol compatibility long before they added Postgres. And meanwhile their cloud offering still doesn't support Postgres wire protocol today, but it does support MySQL wire protocol. > Even search here on HN. fwiw MySQL has been extremely unpopular on HN for a decade or more, even back when MySQL was a more common choice for startups. So there's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy where MySQL ecosystem folks mostly stopped submitting stories here because they never got enough upvotes to rank high enough to get eyeballs and discussion. That all said, I do agree with your overall thesis. | ||