It’s a fine balance. A service like this needs so many talents, it’s very difficult for one to know all of them. You need 1. a infrastructure engineer/linux sysadmin, 2. an API/backend software dev, 3. a Frontend/GUI dev and a 4. Database Engineer/Administrator. These 4 are very very difficult to do well in one person, since almost each of them has infinite depth.

It seems like Firefish developer is good at 2 and very good at 3. That helps attract people to the software because it seems to fancy. But that sets up for failure, as its popularity becomes its own undoing, as the infra and/or the database cannot cope, and then the hapless developer is left running around like a headless chicken. I feel like similar issues are affecting kbin at the moment.

But the opposite is also not great. I’m great at 1 & 2, can kinda handle 4 but I absolutely suck at 3 (UI). As a result, while I can run a custom service with 200K accounts reliably, I can’t make it look good for removed. To cover my failings, the backend and the API are completely open, and I’ve invited anyone who wants to make an frontend, no questions asked. It’s not perfect, but it works.

The scope of building a large webservice is so large, it’s impossible for one person to handle it alone. But it’s also very very difficult to find competent and trustworthy people to cover the aspects you cannot. Especially DBAs! DBAs could be considered like the healer in a “Holy Trinity” game (Tank/Healer/DPS). It’s the role everyone needs but very few enjoy playing.

I wish firefish luck, but I doubt moving to a different DB is going to solve this issue. I’m honestly surprised this is the approach they went for, instead of just tuning postgresql.