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0 pointscultofmetatron5y ago0 comments

firebase is probably the most hyped and overused tech I've seen. I've run into far too many startups that went to firebase because they wanted to scale fast and didn't realize how limited firebase was for queries.

If you're starting a startup, use postgres for your database. it will handle damn near anything and you can spawn off functionality into microservices as they become bottle necks as you scale.

Hell, postgres lets you write database extensions that perform novel behavior. I saw one the other day that automatically syncs data to elastic search. Wouldn't be that hard to envision having writes to certain tables sync to firebase if you need subscriptions on records for certain parts of your app.

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nmfisher5y ago

Two reasons I use Firebase for my app (although with an admittedly trivial schema/data):

a) I have a thousand things to do that are higher priority than configuring/hosting a Postgres server. b) Integration with Firebase Auth is a godsend.

I doubt people choose Firebase for technical or scaling reasons. More likely they choose it because it's trivial to integrate, so you can spend the limited hours you have in each day on more important (customer-facing) work.

cultofmetatronOP5y ago

https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/?aurora-whats-new.sort-by=...

https://www.heroku.com/postgres

https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/postgres/

With all due respect, " they choose it because it's trivial to integrate" is a terrible reason for choosing a technology. Anyone choosing a database should be doing so based on the following.

1. does the insertion and querying mechanisms support the requirements of my app? 2. is it scalable? (ie first few thousand users, beyond that and any tech you pick is going to run into issues without a dedicated strategy) 3. can I afford it? (in terms of maintenance as well as licensing)

Postgres (and mysql) has plenty of standard tooling for integrating into your app and is no where near as limited. I would not take an engineer proposing firebase without making a STRONG logical case for why its the best choice as someone who's graduated out of junior status.

Then again, fixing messes caused by such engineers for several startups that started with firebase because its the easiest to get started with PAID for my galavanting around southeast Asia last year so I won't wag my finger too hard.

nicoburns5y ago

Postgres is also trivially integrated with firebase auth. There's a method in the client SDK which gives you a token you can send with API requests. And a method in the admin SDK that you can use to validate the token and resolve it to a user id.

fomine35y ago

a) You can choose managed PostgreSQL services.

b) Fine but it's too small reason to choose database for serious service, isn't it?

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