Holiday reads 2022

Planetscale shown how MySQL can shine

We all know that SQL migrations are far more painful than they need to be. From my own experience I realized that a lot of big tech companies just turned columns in their relational databases into JSON stores, just to avoid schema migrations. This year, the Planetscale developers showed how they utilize Vitess to create awesome experience for developers. Non blocking schema changes, Behind the scenes: How schema reverts work is a must read. Additionally, I can recommend One million connections, How PlanetScale Boost serves your SQL queries instantly and the whole engineering blog.

SQLite is not a toy database

"There’s a growing movement of people that see the value of single process applications", said Ben Johnson, the author of Litestream. In my personal opinion, SQLite is one of the most underrated databases which suits perfectly for most startups and MVPs. I'm very glad that this year it gets more attention than before.

A database for 2022 and Why I Built Litestream match perfectly with One process programming notes.

More open skepticism about microservices

Many companies are busy splitting into microservices, but they probably don’t know what they will end up with. Some people ask to admit that the microservices was harmful to the software industry, some ask to not complicate the tech stack. Even Elon Musk joined the discussion of this issue after acquiring Twitter. Totally agree with opinion that most companies need more spreadsheet implementations and fewer distributed systems in most cases.