PostgreSQL
Open SourceLaunched 2007The world's most advanced open source relational database
PostgreSQL is universally revered on Hacker News for its rock-solid reliability, rich extension ecosystem (pgvector, PostGIS), and ACID compliance.
Official WebsiteLatest HN discussion:
99.7Score
- Mentions
- 8,900
- Discussers
- 5,800
- positive
- 98%
Hacker News Consensus & Insights
Synthesized from developer and community discussions across multiple years.
Why Hackers Love It
- Extensible architecture: handles JSON, full-text search, and AI vector embeddings via pgvector
- Decades of hardened stability with zero silent data corruption
- Comprehensive SQL standard compliance and sophisticated query planner
Common Concerns & Tradeoffs
- Connection pooling requires external tools like PgBouncer or Odyssey under high concurrency
Ideal for: Default database choice for almost any modern application.
Frequently Mentioned Alongside
Verbatim Hacker News Discussions
Real, unfiltered comments from independent developers.
@cperciva•6/7/2017
Original post ↗Thread: Ask HN: What is your default tech stack for 2017?
“Just use Postgres until you have a concrete, measured reason not to.”