Denis Magda discusses why PostgreSQL's rich extension ecosystem makes specialty databases unnecessary for most use cases.
**JUST USE POSTGRES**
Denis is the author of the brand new book "Just Use Postgres!". Consistent with the name, it talks about how most people do NOT need a collection of specialty databases nor systems. Instead, it focuses how you can fulfil the majority of these use cases with a plain old Postgres (and a bit of extensions).
Over time, PostgreSQL has grown its network effect to become the most powerful general-purpose database in the world, namely due to its rich extension support and active community.
In this super fun conversation, we talk through:
• what MySQL got wrong w.r.t community and why Postgres succeeded
• the recent (commercial) explosion of Postgres development in the world (Supabase, Neon, Crunchy, ClickHouse)
• when Postgres instead of Kafka for messaging
• the significance of the meme “just use postgres”
• Postgres for data analytics
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**TIMELINE**
- intro & Denis' history
- The Just Use Postgres movement
- The Small Data trend and its iImplications
- The timely shift from distributed systems to simplicity
- Updating your priors re: PG capabilities
- MySQL's OSS community split & our experiences with such things
- Postgres for analytics
- PG in the lake house
- today's AI marketing slop
- How you'd build a brand new app on Postgres
- Speedrun through PG extensions
- PG as a Message Queue
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**TRANSCRIPT**
Feed this into your favorite AI for summarization, or to prompt it specific questions:
gist.github.com/stanislavkozlovski/a8a38f9557486086bae2f3b81…
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**OTHER PLATFORMS**
Watch on Spotify here:
open.spotify.com/episode/6TDO03qDBGlKaWELpR6bqE
General RSS here:
anchor.fm/s/104fd76e0/podcast/rss
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**BUY THE BOOK**
Listeners to this show have a special discount of ~40%!
Enter code "2minstrMagda" at checkout to make use of it.
Use it before it expires on March 1st 2026:
✅ manning.com/books/just-use-postgres
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**DENIS**
You can find Denis on:
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dmagda/
- X/Twitter: x.com/denismagda
Why it's here
1 person recommends this
What people say. Recommended as an interesting podcast discussion on the capabilities and versatility of PostgreSQL.
2
u/2minutestreamingin r/PostgreSQL • Recommends
just use postgres - the podcast (/w Denis Magda)
I recently published a (what I think is) very interesting podcast discussion with Denis Magda, the author of the book called "Just Use Postgres". The book focuses on how capable Postgres has grow to become (through its extension ecosystem) and how most people do NOT need a collection of specialty databases nor systems because of that.
We talked through:
• what MySQL got wrong w.r.t community and why Postgres succeeded
• the recent (commercial) explosion of Postgres development in the world (Supabase, Neon, Crunchy, ClickHouse)
• when Postgres instead of Kafka for messaging
• the significance of the meme “just use postgres”
• Postgr…
