I'm frustrated by someone reaching the conclusion that there can ever be a "best database". I spent several hours today writing a bash script that jammed CSV files into sqlite3 and ran some queries on them. Using postgres for this would have been insane, and I can imagine writing the exact opposite of this article if I had tried to do so: "It stores everything all over the place! There's no easily configurable in-memory storage option! All the docs and packages expect you to be running it as a service! Running my script takes an entire ansible playbook just to set things up! Why the hell is there a user table already? This thing uses hundreds of megs of memory at rest sometimes!"
Sqlite is not just for embedded data stores. However, it makes trade-offs to achieve ease of use and performance on certain workloads. If it tried to be postgres then it would be an inferior competitor; instead, it is an alternative that suits some use cases better and others worse. If you're trying to build a web app that can be deployed and backed up as two files, an executable and a db, then you'll probably want sqlite. If you're trying not to shoot yourself in the foot with "oh god why can't I do a full outer join and why are all the dates weird" then use postgres.
I imagine programmers would also find cockroachdb frustrating compared to postgres, if they didn't benefit from anything it offered and used it anyway.
Sqlite is not just for embedded data stores. However, it makes trade-offs to achieve ease of use and performance on certain workloads. If it tried to be postgres then it would be an inferior competitor; instead, it is an alternative that suits some use cases better and others worse. If you're trying to build a web app that can be deployed and backed up as two files, an executable and a db, then you'll probably want sqlite. If you're trying not to shoot yourself in the foot with "oh god why can't I do a full outer join and why are all the dates weird" then use postgres.
I imagine programmers would also find cockroachdb frustrating compared to postgres, if they didn't benefit from anything it offered and used it anyway.