The Image of Postgres

Discovered: Jan 31, 2021.Jon Udell: The Image of Postgres <— “For over a year, I’ve been using Postgres as a development framework. In addition to the core Postgres server that stores all the Hypothesis user, group, and annotation data, there’s now also a separate Postgres server that provides an interpretive layer on top of the raw data. It synthesizes and caches product- and business-relevant views, using a combination of PL/pgSQL and PL/Python. Data and business logic share a common environment. Although I didn’t make the connection until I watched r0ml’s talk, this setup harkens back to the 1980s when Smalltalk (and Lisp, and APL) were programming environments with built-in persistence. The “image” in r0ml’s title refers to the Smalltalk image, i.e. the contents of the Smalltalk virtual machine. It may also connote reputation, in the sense that our image of Postgres isn’t that of a Smalltalk-like environment, though r0ml thinks it should be, and my experience so far leads me to agr”