Re: Can I get some PostgreSQL developer feedback on these five general issues I have with PostgreSQL and its ecosystem?

On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 11:47:10PM -0500, Ron wrote:
> On 9/24/20 6:20 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 12:28:14AM +0200, tutiluren(at)tutanota(dot)com wrote:
> > > Sep 21, 2020, 7:53 PM by jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com:
> > > See my comment about Google. The information is out there and easy to find.
> > >
> > > I guess I'm the worst idiot in the world, then, who can't DuckDuckGo (Google is
> > > evil) it even after 15 years.
> > >
> > > Seriously, I didn't type my feedback "for fun". It may be difficult for very
> > > intelligent people to understand (as often is the case, because you operate on
> > > a whole different level), but the performance-related PostgreSQL configuration
> > > options are a *nightmare* to me and many others. I spent *forever* reading
> > > about them and couldn't make any sense of it all. Each time I tried, I would
> > > give up, frustrated and angry, with no real clue what "magic numbers" it
> > > wanted.
> > >
> > > It's quite baffling to me how this can be so difficult for you all to
> > > understand. Even if we disregard the sheer intelligence factor, it's clear that
> > > users of PG don't have the same intimate knowledge of PG's internals as the PG
> > > developers, nor could possibly be expected to.
> > >
> > > As mentioned, I kept going back to the default configuration over and over
> > > again. Anyone who doesn't is either a genius or pretends/thinks that they
> > > understand it. (Or I'm extremely dumb.)
> > I think there is a clear dependency that people reading the docs,
> > particularly for performance purposes, must have an existing knowledge
> > of a lot of low-level things --- this could be the cause of your
> > frustration.
>
> And that's a serious problem with the documentation. (Not that I know how to
> fix it in an OSS project.)

We added a glossary in PG 13, so we could certainly have some kind of
hardware terms primer which explains various OS features that affect
Postgres.

--
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