Top all-time · #3712
v
Personal blog · avi.im/blag · on HN as avinasshprogrammingsystemsdata
v is a personal blog at avi.im about programming, systems and data. Since 2015, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 65 times, most often “Inserting a billion rows in SQLite under a minute”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link avi.im's SQLite posts, covering insert benchmarks, write contention and the lack of checksums in the file format. One commenter defends the blog against a claim of hype.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
v: Go and Rust programmer from India.
Most-linked posts?
- Inserting a billion rows in SQLite under a minute6 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2021-07-18
- Setsum – order agnostic, additive, subtractive checksum4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-09-13
- Zero Disk Architecture4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-11-24
- In Search of a Faster SQLite3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-12-14
- PSA: Most databases do not do checksums by default3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-11-10
- It is becoming difficult for me to be productive in Python2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-02-06
- SQLite does not do checksums2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-11-09
- SQLite prefixes its temp files with `etilqs_`2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-04-18
- How bloom filters made SQLite 10x faster2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-22
- Django v1 to v4 Upgrade2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-07
What Hacker News says?
> There are plenty of large projects written in Python. There are, but they are certainly a pain in the ass to work with. I once had to work on a semi-large Python codebase and got so frustrated that I wanted to port the code to some other language. The best part? I wrote the majority of that codebase myself, just months earlier. I ranted about it here: https://avi.im/blag/2023/refactoring-python/
Comment linking /blag/2023/refactoring-python/
on “Show HN: Nue – Apps lighter than a React button”Submitted Inserting a billion rows in SQLite under a minute as a story · 573 points
HN discussion> am now always looking for more ways to include this for inline-documentation. same lol. here is a blog post of mine where I used them - https://avi.im/blag/2024/disaggregated-storage I had to convert them to images because I couldn't get to working with Hugo, static site generator
Comment linking /blag/2024/disaggregated-storage
on “Monodraw”Submitted How bloom filters made SQLite 10x faster as a story · 504 points
HN discussionI recently upgraded [0] one of my project [1] to Django v4, from Django v1. The changes from Django 3 to 4 were fairly simple, just one line change in my case. The change log is extremely detailed, it was easy to upgrade. Also, I found a tool called django-upgrade [2] which makes some changes automatically, rest I made manually. [0] - https://avi.im/blag/2021/rc-day-20/ [1] - https://github.com/avinassh/della [2] -…
Comment linking /blag/2021/rc-day-20/
on “Django 4.0”Submitted Fun facts about SQLite as a story · 393 points
HN discussion> I'd personally prefer deeper thinking which this blog's previous posts-- high in hype and low in technical rigor-- have not yet provided. Really? Something like this[1] (literally the previous post made by the author!) is "high in hype and low in technical rigor"? Or do you just have an axe to grind? [1]: https://avi.im/blag/2024/sqlite-past-present-future/
Comment linking /blag/2024/sqlite-past-present-future/
on “Fun facts about SQLite”Submitted In Search of a Faster SQLite as a story · 355 points
HN discussionI was working on a project to insert a billion rows in SQLite under a minute, batching the inserts made it crazy fast compared to individual transactions. link: https://avi.im/blag/2021/fast-sqlite-inserts/
Comment linking /blag/2021/fast-sqlite-inserts/
on “TIL–Python has a built-in persistent key-value store (2018)”Submitted PSA: SQLite WAL checksums fail silently and may lose data as a story · 279 points
HN discussionHere's sqlite doing 100 million inserts in 33 seconds which should fit into nearly every workload, though it is batched. https://avi.im/blag/2021/fast-sqlite-inserts/ So write contention from multiple connections is what you're talking about, versus a single process using sqlite?
Comment linking /blag/2021/fast-sqlite-inserts/
on “SQLite: Past, Present, and Future”Submitted Oldest recorded transaction as a story · 182 points
HN discussionyou might like my other post - https://avi.im/blag/2024/databases-checksum/ bad news is, most databases don't do checksums by default.
Comment linking /blag/2024/databases-checksum/
on “PSA: SQLite WAL checksums fail silently and may lose data”Submitted Hacking the Go compiler to add a new keyword as a story · 134 points
HN discussion> I feel it's quite unfair for the title to call out sqlite on checksums, when in reality, as the very closing line of the article states most databases don't do checksum verifications. Hi, author of the post here. I work mostly with SQLite and that's the database I'm most familiar with, hence mentioning it in the title. I have also noted at the bottom: > Again, this is not a bug. Most databases (except a few) assum…
Comment linking /blag/2024/databases-checksum
on “SQLite does not do checksums”Submitted SQLite does not do checksums as a story · 132 points
HN discussionI attended the Recurse Center remotely for their Winter batch (Nov 2021 - Feb 2022), and the experience was terrific. The community is friendly, helpful, and empathetic. The environment and focus made me get better at programming and explore many areas in Computer Science, which I wouldn't have otherwise. I spent time hacking on SQLite, BTrees, Go Compilers, Code search engines etc. I met and paired with really amaz…
Comment linking /blag/
on “My Recurse Center Syllabus (2021)”Submitted SQLite (with WAL) doesn't do `fsync` on each commit under default settings as a story · 106 points
HN discussionI agree with you. I also find Python to be slower for iterations and refactoring. I ranted on about it recently - https://avi.im/blag/2023/refactoring-python/
Comment linking /blag/2023/refactoring-python/
on “ML would have advanced faster if another front-end language had been adopted?”Submitted Replacing a cache service with a database as a story · 81 points
HN discussionyou might like my post - Towards Inserting One Billion Rows in SQLite Under A Minute [0] [0] - https://avi.im/blag/2021/fast-sqlite-inserts/
Comment linking /blag/2021/fast-sqlite-inserts/
on “Inserting 100k rows 66 times faster”Submitted Building a distributed log using S3 (under 150 lines of Go) as a story · 63 points
HN discussionThe app is very simple and has limited features: - User signup (with invite code) - Messaging and secret/sneaky messaging (with email notifications) - Gallery - Admin features - Drawing names, Sending mass emails Check screenshots here - http://avi.im/della/#screenshots
Comment linking /della/
on “Show HN: Della – Django App to Manange Secret Santa/Gift Exchange”Submitted Why does SQLite (in production) have such a bad rep? as a story · 23 points
HN discussionmay I introduce you to my own service called gg-flip [0] and the SaaS version GaS? [1] [0] - https://github.com/avinassh/gg-flip [1] - https://avi.im/gg-flip/
Comment linking /gg-flip/
on “IsOdd (and IsEven) as a Service”Submitted In Search of a Faster SQLite as a story · 15 points
HN discussionHey, thank you for reading and that's right. Entire text of the column needs to be changed. Also, I wrote another post explaining the issue in detail - https://avi.im/blag/2023/hekaton-paper-typo/ I will update both posts and clarify this! edit: I updated the posts
Comment linking /blag/2023/hekaton-paper-typo/
on “Internet is wholesome: MVCC edition”Submitted Show HN: Little Finger, a library to add a kill switch to your mobile apps as a story · 10 points
HN discussionI am experimenting with SQLite, where I try inserting 1B rows in under a minute. The current best is inserting 100M rows at 23s. I cut many corners to get performance, but the tweaks might suit your workload. I have explained my rationale and approach here - https://avi.im/blag/2021/fast-sqlite-inserts/ the repo link - https://github.com/avinassh/fast-sqlite3-inserts
Comment linking /blag/2021/fast-sqlite-inserts/
on “SQLite performance tuning: concurrent reads, multiple GBs and 100k SELECTs/s”Submitted Zero Disk Architecture as a story · 7 points
HN discussion
