№ 011 · mar 06 '26 · 6 min · stack

The weird joys of a postgres-only backend

What happens when you refuse to add a second database for five years.

the rule is simple: if postgres can do it, postgres does it. jobs queue? SELECT ... FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED. full-text search? tsvector. vector search? pg_vector. caching? materialised views and a cron. feature flags? a table.

it sounds austere. it is. it's also five years of fewer moving parts, one backup story, one monitoring dashboard, one mental model. the day i have to add redis, i'll write a sad notebook about it. that day hasn't arrived.