DHH discusses SQLite (and Stoicism)

[@Yoshua-Robinson]

DHH is truly an amazing guy. He does not stop surprising me in every podcast and interview I see from him. The world would be better if other companies and people would be like DHH and 37signals.

[@Xe054]

Woah, it's shocking how much Twitter can skew reality. People love to hate on DHH there, but I found this entire conversation so damn inspirational! Thank you both for sharing your insights. I'm super grateful and gained a new perspective on what it means to be a developer.

[@Half-code]

Lame idiots hate on DHH

[@aberbaCodes]

Twitter sheep

[@arbitrarysequence]

It's shocking that people are shocked to find social media of most any kind can skew their reality. No offense intended, I'm happy for you.

[@Qwonk]

People on twitter are dumb though 😂 most devs love building complex monstrosities instead of solving business problems. That’s why they work for a company and PMs

[@prawtism]

Have never seen hate towards him on Twitter, only praise

[@idearat0]

"We cannot give up on the internet being something that individual developers can build for and be competitive on." - DHH Such a powerful point and one that resonates so much having watched 'www' go from a curiosity on my NeXT box to what we all use today.

[@dmccallie]

I love the idea that one person should be able to build, deploy, and support a complete web site.

[@someguyO2W]

We used to do it and still do. Especially rails folk.

[@pequod4557]

Yeah, I love doing that every day.

[@someguyO2W]

@@pequod4557 infact, I did another one just this week.

[@davidpaez_co]

DHH is slowly becoming my virtual mentor. That bit about stoicism was great. Amazing interview, thank you Aaron!

[@DS-ow2ge]

DHH is one of those people who starts with these takes that seem super out there and then society just converges on them over time. I bet he bough nvidia stock a decade ago

[@KushLemon]

🤡

[@leularia]

🤡

[@RR-et6zp]

lmao

[@LaurentBourgault-Roy]

I remember when he spoke against TDD and the whole internet was in an uproar... and now nobody insist that I must absolutely write a failing test first.

[@geoblk3000]

@@LaurentBourgault-Roy DHH has had his fair share of controversies, but the guy codes real-world applications with real-world features and real deadlines, and that's the key. Some stuff work in theory and some work in production. Pure "theoretical" TDD doesn't work in production.

[@marlonmarcello]

Great interview Aaron, thank you! You are a great communicator, seriously. Interesting questions, you never intererrupt and you are legit interested. Keep up the great work and I am looking forwards to that SQLite course!

[@aarondfrancis]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate that. I had a lot of fun talking to him

[@theSlavenIvanov]

Love how exited DHH gets whenever he talks about tech!

[@RajeshM-hy1qm]

I owe a lot to Rails. It got me started on my journey as a self-taught software developer. Grateful for the work DHH has done and continues to do and make it available to the rest of us.

[@mkwpaul]

Hearing DHH's takes and views on thing is always a delight.

[@mattg-q3z]

Aaron, I'm coming straight from your exceptional High Performance SQLite course, and this interview was just the icing on the cake. My own personal (dev) philosophies seem to be very well aligned with DHH. And I'm constantly getting shit and pushback from other devs for not wanting to put a static three page portfolio site with 12 visits/day on an AWS cluster, or for not using a massive frontend framework with a build system that's breaking every 6 months because of deprecated dependencies with criticial security vulnerabilities. "That's how we do things now", they're telling me, and hey, anyway we can charge the client for needing to update this three page portfolio site with 12 visits/day every few months, it's cool. THIS has been so refreshing and good for my soul.

[@aarondfrancis]

ha I'm SO glad to hear that. I'm glad we're in a spot in the industry right now where simple is in vogue again

[@mattg-q3z]

@@aarondfrancis Indeed. And I desperately hope this is just the very early beginnings of a massive shift in the industry.

[@Leonhart_93]

Aaron, you have the perfect attitude towards things to make new people be interested in an older language like PHP, Laravel and all the stuff around that. Your combination of general lightness and genuine interest in these things works really well. You are probably making a significant difference in changing some of the negative reputation of the language, keep it up!

[@ivan.jeremic]

I think the language should be rebranded in laravel, maybe merge the companies. Would be a smart move to take the name of the most popular php framework for the language itself

[@aarondfrancis]

Geeze this made my day. Thank you

[@boenrobot]

​@ivan.jeremic Merging a framework and language branding is a bad idea from a historical standpoint. Once upon a time, Zend was heavily featured all over the place. The PHP core is still referred to as the Zend Engine, there's the zend_extension ini directive, and the Zend Framework... existed until recently... it's now renamed to Laminas. It started to become less popular over time as other frameworks like Symfony and Laravel started to become more popular.

[@theshinyplayer2373]

Great content Aaron and David, thanks! I really agree with David on complexity. I've been a one man team since my teens, and I've learnt quite a few times that complexity(and dependencies) are both a huge risk. Less complexity and dependencies makes it so much easier to come back to something you wrote 10 years ago that is now in need of a small update.

[@CreatorX64]

Love when a conversation like this gives me dozens of new ideas & things to try out. This interview is such a breath of fresh air when compared to the engagement-oriented needless drama that goes on in Twitter. Thank you both!

[@BartoszRybacki0]

Wow, It is so good to hear the Single Person Framework philosophy. I learned JS long time ago, I even did some web dev back in early 2000 (as a backend dev, so maybe I was fullstack developer before the term was even trending). Then at some point, web dev became so complex, magic tools for css, packing js, fighting with disappearing dependencies. 100 different frameworks. So I never bothered to setup web dev environment. It was too much work for me to learn and configure everything for a simple fix. So I always pushed such tasks to Frontend Developers. But with simple tools and frameworks setup like DHH explains it at about minute 25:00 I would be again a happy fullstack developer.

[@bongabonga3190]

Joe: "Oh so you run a blog, whats with the 20 guys behind you?" Bob: "DevOps team"

[@aarondfrancis]

I don't get it

[@bongabonga3190]

​@@aarondfrancispretty much agree with DHHs stance on needless complexity ... PPL sometimes don't even know what kind of product/application they wanna build, but set up a k8s cluster from the get go 😂

[@illegalsmirf]

devops IS complexity for the sake of complexity (and keeping people in jobs)

[@electrolyteorb]

Don't forget to setup AWS Cognito for 7-Factor authentication for all of your 4 users

[@sandworm9528]

​@@aarondfrancishow did you not get that 😂

[@SimoneFolador]

Wonderful interview! I absolutely love how DHH is passionate about stuff, such a unique character. Thanks

[@prevailrob]

DHH's transition into Gilbert Gottfried is almost complete

[@neverything]

What a wonderful interview Aaron! Thanks a lot 🎉

[@jon1867]

DHH rants are fun as hell to listen to.

[@mikulcek]

I am a regulare DHH blog reader, seing you two in the same place just made a lot of sense. A lot of practical value here, great talk DHH!

[@impromp02]

I've kinda known of DHH since a long time but now for the first time watching him speak. he has a very passionate and charming personality. Aaron is great host ofc.

[@JohanEliasson]

Love this interview and DHH has the exact right mind set. Fighting complexity ❤ Looking forward to the SQLite course!

[@SlowDancer]

While negative visualization is attributed to stoicism, DHH is not the first guy I would think of to describe stoicism! Great talk.

[@wusswuzz5818]

Fantastic interview. Can feel the passion. Wish everyone could have the opportunity to do a work stint with persons like this.

[@jamieknight326]

SQLite is amazing. We use it within our container for holding a couple of large mostly static datasets… when running at full speed it’s handling millions of read and writes per minute.

[@nimmneun]

First? 🎉 On a serious note ... markdown for blog/article type projects and sqlite for more complex use-cases where u need relational data ... love the simplicity 😊

[@ivanradunovic5984]

What an inspiration. I was not aware that this approach has a name Negative Visualization, but that's what I am doing all the time.

[@AtaideCarlos]

31:02 "PHP" 😁 Bring it back! Ah, the nostalgia...

[@stuffless]

17:38 - Yes! Thank you

[@Aeric80]

I use SQLite in production where I build a support ticketing system as a single developer. I don't use any modern JS framework or TS. Just plain jquery, html, bootstrap. I also build my own Web Api framework and ORM that can connect to MySQL, MSSQL, Firebird and PostgreSQL. The backend is written in B4X that compiles into java application.

[@yechielw]

sqlite can also be used a in-memory open-source replacement for redis using the following command: sqlite3 /dev/shm/database.db 😄

[@thegrumpydeveloper]

This is cool, but I think my surprising takeaway was that ssd and local without network can compete with redis on another server. Only shared cached data would need an external cache

[@onsearchfocus]

#TIL

[@robrobob]

What a great conversation! Such good vibes and so much positivity. It's amazing what you can do with tools nowadays that 10 or 20 years ago would have been considered crazy. His comments around reducing complexity resonated with me so much. After 2 years of JS/Typescript/Feathers/React dev and getting back to PHP now, I'm having so much fun again! I've taken an ultra minimalist approach with my current PHP project and I'm getting so much done! SQLite is such an interesting option because there's so few moving parts. In the interest of simplicity and getting things done, it's looking like a really good option. I also love what he said about customers not caring about the underlying tech. As long you're adding value and customers are having a great experience, it's going to make zero difference to them what you use underneath. Anyway, thanks so much for sharing another great video!

[@justine_chang39]

although I'm a Typescript fanboy, I cannot deny that this podcast was very nice to watch. This guys is so interesting.

[@Kane0123]

Hell yeah! What a fantastic get Aaron. What a great confirmation that you’re doing great stuff.

[@jasonpmcneill]

Key moment - 17:48 DHH makes a powerful point: big tech companies and their architecture cannot become a dependency of individual Web developers.

[@asdqwe4427]

Having been fighting Kubernetes every 6 months for the past 3 years, I'm starting to love this podcast ❤

[@ramvasuthevan]

Great interview!! And I learned that SQLite has STRICT tables

[@salvatoreshiggerino6810]

The "view source" thing was my favorite thing about HyperCard. We really need to bring that back.

[@Bukosaure]

What a wonderful interview, really. Hard to beat this genuine content.

[@senpos]

Watched it on your site and dhh was on the right side of the screen! Technology!

[@aarondfrancis]

What will they think of next??

[@HenriqueGraca]

Amazing discussion and so many great insights !

[@panggilmeiam]

LibSQL is for another case, and now they have native extension for PHP and also for Driver for Laravel!

[@johnnyjohnsonxx]

I've been dabbling in various areas of web development since I was 12, and only 4 years ago I discovered Laravel (and through it I re-discovered PHP) and now I'm at a point where DHH described as "one developer shop". I can build a whole webapp that can compete against conglomerates, all by myself. And Laravel has a huge part in that. Not only because it makes coding easier with its abstractions and helper functions and stuff, because it makes you "capable" almost instantly. When you see that you can build a note taking app with full CRUD operations and authentication in less than an hour, then the question becomes "Okay, now WHAT do I build?". From "HOW do I build it?". In my opinion Laravel is the perfect example of a framework. It makes web development (and PHP) so much easier and actually FUN.

[@alveek]

DHH is a great guy Thanks for the interview!

[@YT_Watcher]

35:00 This should be the mindset of anyone not only programmers. You shoud be capable of doing anything alone. Gain enough knowledge.

[@hanes2]

Pocketbase been awesome for me, which is SQLite

[@DigitalDesignET]

Very good interview, thanks from Ethiopia.

[@TypeScriptTV]

Which awesome Sony camera is DHH using? 📸

[@currentsongs]

Same question. I’m trying to find out, but no luck so far.

[@NeoMekhar]

Hey Aaron, awsome interview. I really enjoyed it and i personally like DHH a lot. The dude's got what a lot of devs are missing IMO: a bit of common sense, heh. Keep up the good work, you are an inspiration!! Cheers!!

[@Whateverworksism]

Love this! Great conversation.

[@Spongeoel]

Great conversation, loved to hear it

[@Cyber_Lanka]

Aaron is the best. He needs more exposure and subscribers

[@daniel_petrica]

Loved this interview

[@StephenFosterUK]

So that was a joy. I'm also realising that some other "influencers" have influenced my perception of DHH.

[@aarondfrancis]

🤐

[@popetgirl]

Really nice podcast. I love sqlite really want to see laravel use sqlite as queue driver. I have used sqlite as queue driver as separate database just queue jobs with laravel 7 but the issue i faced it lock sqlite file if number of jobs are high same thing happen with when used mysql as queue driver jobs table was locked and don't know how to unlock that table. Loved to see sqlite as cache

[@samifouad]

always bet on simplicity 🔥

[@edhahaz]

I don't see how postgres would be worse deployed locally but I could see how the massively vaster features would be better.

[@jonnyso1]

My only real problem with Sqlite is how much of a pain it is to make changes to the tables, if you need to change your schema, especially when using indexes and foreign keys, it works but its a hassle.

[@catsby9051]

It's interesting to see someone like DHH and then someone like Jonathan Blow who, generally speaking, tend to be on opposite ends of programming culture both saying that modern web technology has become a convoluted mess.

[@bitclaw]

Rails is awesome, really helped push web dev forward

That was a great interview!

[@laughingvampire7555]

I agree with the dependency hell, sadly I've seen it in Rails a lot with elasticsearch and qt and mysql.

[@sugasheeze]

“i did a thing, a thing happened” - quote of the century

[@wagnerfernandes8780]

What a awesome talk!

[@zx-sy1qh]

"Best.... Interview.... Ever...." - Simpson's Guy

You would have explained all of that in 50 secs and make it fun. Thank you for your great content, is really inspiring.

[@kasmanialisaad]

Love SQLite. Great talk

[@JoshLemer]

Am I missing something or wouldn't using SQLite for a web app limit you to one instance of your service? That may be fine for scale for most apps, but what about availability? Wouldn't it be guaranteeing downtime when you roll out updates to your app, between when the old version shuts down and the new version starts up? Not to mention a crash of one service like OOM killing your whole service.

[@jungervin8765]

So true. Most developers can't appreciate it, because they uneducated, they only can see the downsides of javascript and the complexity of the WEB, but they don't understand the problems that this tech solving and all the opportunities.

[@BaronSenf]

How cool would it be to have the simplicity of SQLite with the rich feature set of Postgres (JSONb support, lateral joins...)

[@NatnaelBirhanu-ri7vb]

Great interview, Aron

[@St0rMsk]

Main takeaway from this video "Linux, it just works" - DHH

[@danieljonguitud9632]

Great content, thx for sharing!

[@pindab0ter]

One piece of feedback: I would've loved an introduction of the guest and what they are known for. I don't know who he is or what he has done. He frequently refers to projects/companies that haven't been introduced to the listener, which was honestly a little frustrating. Practically this means that I don't know what perspective to put those statements in.

[@EightNineOne]

He's the guy who invented Ruby on Rails and basecamp

[@pindab0ter]

@@EightNineOne oh nice! See, I would’ve loved to have known that up front!

[@mrrolandlawrence]

so true. I wrote some apps in 1997 and it ran till june 2024 untouched!

[@k98killer]

Theo demonstrated the performance issues with Hey, including substantial lags (using gigabit fiber) and a lack of debounce. It would be interesting to see him defend or at least reflect on the engineering choices that led to that flawed UX. DHH has seemed pretty dogmatic about not using reactive clients on Xitter (formerly known as Tw), so I wonder if he would even acknowledge the UX issues with Hey.

[@aarondfrancis]

They already fixed it. None of their customers noticed so it wasn't a priority

[@k98killer]

@@aarondfrancis I see.

[@igorcastilhos]

Nice interview with Cbum 😂❤

[@davidsiewert8649]

That Sony Camera with Linux support is this? Asking for a friend

[@currentsongs]

Same question. I’m trying to find out, but no luck so far.

[@paulsalele3844]

This was a great interview!! Thanks!! Love DHH but still disagree with him on typescript LOL

[@SamadAhmed-dm3hz]

Everything he says is common sense. I have no idea why he gets hate. So glad I found out about the Rails community and this amazing methodology towards development and business

[@kahnfatman]

Twitter bubble world. Don't trust Twitter

[@djordje1999]

i need this on apple podcasts

[@thegrumpydeveloper]

Wait what are the better sqlite defaults? Need these settings. Anyone read through the rails docs/source to get these better ones?

[@sheldon98c]

Great interview

[@EmperorAlles]

wow, can't believe this interview is happening.

[@cyclingcomputer]

In other words, DHH is all about simplicity and efficiency.

[@coolbugfacts1234]

SQLite is probably the most battle tested piece of software in existence.

[@kellyaquinastom]

44:30 writebook

[@nexovec]

There's an incorrect assumption that SQLite can't horizontally scale. Go see Turso or RQLite!

[@frenchmarty7446]

RQlite doesn't scale writes, in fact writes are actually slower compared to a single SQLite instance (with the same settings). Reads only scale if you can tollerate weaker consistency levels. Turso is a managed service. They are almost certainly sharding and replicating data with their own proprietary layer on top of SQLite. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but you're now talking about a separate paid service that happens to use SQLite. Side note: SQLite was the backend for FoundationDB for a very long time.

[@nexovec]

@@frenchmarty7446 I did actually know about those restrictions but somehow conveniently forgot to mention them. But either way making it scalable would by itself just invalidate the promise of embedding the database in the program.

[@nexovec]

@@frenchmarty7446 There also seems to be a video about LiteFS by Aaron that is related.

[@antondrevetskyi9526]

Thanks for the video!

[@jboss1073]

Timestamp for Stoicism?

[@theSlavenIvanov]

Hi Aaron, if you run Sqlite in prod, how do you inspect the db?

[@lilyoshi1310]

Copy the file local kek

[@theSlavenIvanov]

@@lilyoshi1310 And if you want to do updates on the fly?

[@daltonyon]

Great talk!

[@ThatCrazzyRussian]

I'm a bit confused, which part was about stoicism?

[@aarondfrancis]

33:13

[@ps-dn7ce]

This is brilliant

[@mike-2342]

Great video

[@andherium]

Someone please add timestamps

[@foobars3816]

All these people realizing that what they have been told about DHH is not the reality and he actually just cares about simplicity. I wonder how many of them still believe what they heard about Ruby.

[@feelingfun5149]

Wow! That's cool!🤘

[@jackkorovev5217]

DHH is good at hiding flaws as Aaron is good at hiding yawns

[@aarondfrancis]

oops

[@joschomo1010]

What a great dude