Re: Oracle vs. PostgreSQL - a comment

On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 11:26:07PM +1000, Tim Cross wrote:
> Yes, even after longer time doing Oracle, I still never felt as
> comfortable or across things as much as I do with PG. Started with
> Oracle 7 and stayed until 11g and each year, it got worse rather than better.
>
> After working as a DBA, I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes, DBA has
> to equal "Don't Bother Asking".
>
> As a developer, I have to admit being somewhat embarrassed by the
> frequently poor understanding amongst many developers regarding the
> technology they are using. I've never understood this. I come across
> developers all the time who are completely clueless once outside their
> IDE or editor. Too often, they have little understanding of the hosting
> environment, the base protocols they are using, the RDBMS or even basic
> SQL. I don't understand how you can develop anything of quality if you
> don't have a thorough understanding of all the technology involved.
>
> I'm probably just a dinosaur - I also prefer VI and Emacs as my primary
> development environments and will use psql and sqlplus before Taod,
> pgAdmin, sqlDeveloper etc.

In my many years as a DBA/developer, I have learned that understanding
the low-level stuff, even down to the CPU behavior, allows debugging of
problems much more efficiently, to the point where it looks like magic
when you can quickly point out the problem. Also, the low-level stuff
rarely changes, so once you understand it, you can use it forever. The
big problem is getting people to see the value in learning that stuff
when they don't have an immediate need --- curiosity helps with
motivation. :-)

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB https://enterprisedb.com

The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee