I created youjustneedpostgres.com to argue that most teams could use Postgres for almost everything. For queues, for searching, for documents. The recommendation was to stop using a new tool every time a new problem arises, because Postgres probably already does that.
And then I spent months building a tool whose sole purpose is to make you dive even deeper into Postgres. Yes, and the irony doesn't escape me.
But the point remains, okay? Postgres can do more than you imagine. The WAL is a complete, ordered, and durable record of every state transition in your database. When you start using it, several architectural problems become much simpler.
In this community you should know, but Change Data Capture is a concept where Instead of your application announcing "this changed," the database notifies you: each insert, update, and delete, in order, at the moment it happens, with the values before and after. And this is already built into several databases; it just needs the "wiring."
This concept already exists in several tools, but all the ones I've used are either too overpowered/expensive, or didn't completely solve my problem. That's why I created Kaptanto (https://kaptan.to). It means "the one who captures" in Esperanto. I wrote a great article about how it was built. I hope you like it!
You've heard the advice: "Use the right tool for the right job." Sounds reasonable. Even wise. So you followed it. You picked Redis for caching, Elasticsearch for search, Kafka for messaging, MongoDB for documents, Pinecone for vectors, InfluxDB for time-series, and Postgres for... well, the relational stuff.
Congratulations. You now have 7 databases to maintain, 7 backup strategies to manage, 7 monitoring dashboards to watch, 7 security audits to run, and 7 monsters that can break at 3 AM.
The thing nobody talks about, cause it doesn't sell: that advice "the right tool for the right job" is the battle cry of every vendor's marketing department.
The uncomfortable truth is that PostgreSQL is not "just a relational database." It hasn't been for over a decade. It's a data platform that does what most of these specialized tools do, using the same algorithms, with a single connection string, a single backup strategy, and a single place to debug when everything breaks at 3 AM.
Not "close enough." Not "good enough at small scale." The same algorithms.
Yea, I'm thinking about how to make the design more interactive and useful. I'll probably integrate Excalidraw on it and allow users to describe also the best solution
I created a free (of course) interactive game that teaches System Design through police investigation cases. The idea is simple: instead of reading loose theory, you investigate failed distributed systems. You analyze logs, inspect components in an interactive diagram, identify the root cause, and recommend a fix. Kind of like an infrastructure detective.
The inspiration came from https://sqlpd.com, which does something similar for SQL. Since what I enjoy most is talking about System Design, I thought it would be a good idea.
There are 33 cases covering replication, consistency, load balancing, caching, messaging, storage, networking, and advanced topics like chaos engineering and distributed tracing.
The cases are sequential and increase in difficulty, with a ranking system from Rookie to Chief.
The project is open source and supports Portuguese and English.
For the past few weeks, I've been working on one of the coolest things I've ever pushed to production (in my opinion, of course): a LeetCode-style platform for system design.
I've been writing about system design for a while now, and I genuinely love the topic (I talk about it weekly on my blog https://olucasandrade.com). I always wanted a tool to practice it without having to hunt down a billion references across the internet.
Every tool I found was either paywalled for the basics or completely abandoned. So, I built my own, and I have no intention of letting it go. I believe this project has the potential to build a really great community. That's why I decided to "open-source" the entire platform. It's 100% open on GitHub, and I'm already creating issues for the next planned evolutions.
How this can help you:
The idea is simple: just like LeetCode, you can submit your solution (with a diagram + textual explanation), and you can view and interact with solutions from others. No favoritism here—I truly believe there's no better way to prepare for an interview or just sharpen your skills.
I don't plan to fully "productize" this until I hit my first major goal, so feel free to play around as much as you want, and please let me know if you find any bugs.
But if you want to help on a deeper level, feel free to open issues or even pull requests to add new features or work on existing ones. Honestly, the potential of this platform is not something I have enough bandwidth to explore alone. Finally, spreading the word is also a big help. I want this to reach as many people as possible who need it.
Cheers!
The link to the app is: https://systemstudio.app If it gets some traction, I'll share the next steps that I plan.
And then I spent months building a tool whose sole purpose is to make you dive even deeper into Postgres. Yes, and the irony doesn't escape me. But the point remains, okay? Postgres can do more than you imagine. The WAL is a complete, ordered, and durable record of every state transition in your database. When you start using it, several architectural problems become much simpler.
In this community you should know, but Change Data Capture is a concept where Instead of your application announcing "this changed," the database notifies you: each insert, update, and delete, in order, at the moment it happens, with the values before and after. And this is already built into several databases; it just needs the "wiring."
This concept already exists in several tools, but all the ones I've used are either too overpowered/expensive, or didn't completely solve my problem. That's why I created Kaptanto (https://kaptan.to). It means "the one who captures" in Esperanto. I wrote a great article about how it was built. I hope you like it!
Oh, and it's open source :)