February 22, 2026
SQL smackdown, popcorn ready
Postgres Is Your Friend. ORM Is Not
Internet splits: Postgres worship vs. ORM roast, migration wars ignite
TLDR: The post says Postgres can do it all, so skip the ORM and extra systems. Comments erupt: pro-ORM folks cite easier database changes, critics call the post a straw man, and pragmatists warn of maintenance trade-offs — a real-world debate on choosing tools that shape speed, reliability, and cost.
Another day, another spicy “ditch your ORM” post — and the crowd brought popcorn. The article crowns Postgres the one-box wonder: it stores structured and messy data, searches text fast (thanks to a built-in add‑on), auto-slices big tables, and even does job queues with a built‑in “notify and lock” combo. Translation: less extra tech, more power in one place.
But the comments turned it into a cage match. janmarsal rides in shouting, “ORMs are your friend,” pointing to migrations — the structured way teams update databases — as the lifesaver feature. altmanaltman plays referee, calling it a “classic trade-off” between tight control and long-term sanity: raw SQL can be clean, but maintenance can get hairy. Then tags2k swings, accusing the post of straw‑manning bad tools: if you’re getting accidental writes, that’s not the ORM, that’s your testing. And Doctor_Fegg delivers the eye-roll meme: “We haven’t had an ‘ORMs bad’ post in three days.”
The vibe: some devs want Postgres to be the superhero that replaces half the stack; others say ORMs (tools that turn database rows into code objects) prevent chaos and save teams time. Meanwhile, puns like “I loved delving into this post” kept the mood cheeky. Drama level: high, migrations are the hill to die on.
Key Points
- •Postgres can store and index semi-structured data using JSONB and GIN, enabling efficient queries on JSON content.
- •The pg_trgm extension supports trigram-based search and fuzzy matching, potentially replacing external search for mid-sized use cases.
- •pg_partman automates time-based partitioning with premake and retention policies, helping manage data lifecycle and scale.
- •Combining FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED with LISTEN/NOTIFY enables robust, horizontally scalable concurrent task processing.
- •A PL/pgSQL trigger can emit pg_notify on INSERTs to decouple notification logic from application repository code.