Top all-time · #4884
Sequin blog
Company blog · blog.sequinstream.comprogrammingsystems
Sequin blog is the company blog at blog.sequinstream.com, writing about programming and systems. Since 2024, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 29 times, most often “We Built Mini-Elixir”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-07-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for posts on Elixir and BEAM, Postgres as a queue or counter, and webhooks versus events. Commenters point to specific posts as explanations and alternatives.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Read about how we're building Sequin, shipping features, and pushing Postgres.
Most-linked posts?
- We Built Mini-Elixir3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-04-22
- Time-based retention strategies in Postgres3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-10-30
- Postgres sequences can commit out-of-order2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-07-23
- Using watermarks to coordinate change data capture in Postgres2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-02
- What makes Elixir great for startups?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-26
- How we build forms in LiveView and LiveSvelte2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-05
- Request-Reply in Postgres2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-23
What Hacker News says?
Depending on what you want to do, there are ways to change where the blocking occurs, like https://blog.sequinstream.com/genserver-reply-dont-call-us-w...
Comment linking /genserver-reply-dont-call-us-well-call-you/
on “Why I wrote the BEAM book”Submitted Using watermarks to coordinate change data capture in Postgres as a story · 102 points
HN discussionThe article describes using a dedicated table for the counter, one row per table, in the same transaction (so parallel writers to the same table wait for each other through a lock on that row). If you would rather have readers waiting and parallel writers there is a more complex scheme here: https://blog.sequinstream.com/postgres-sequences-can-commit-...
Comment linking /postgres-sequences-can-commit-out-of-order/
on “Kafka is Fast – I'll use Postgres”Submitted No such thing as exactly-once delivery as a story · 99 points
HN discussionThis is so cool. A key benefit is that it's not embedding the C Lua runtime and compiler, but rather implements Lua in the host language (Elixir/Erlang). When sandboxing user code in another runtime, you need to serialize the data to and from that runtime. That comes with a performance penalty. So, for example, if you sandbox code in WASM, you need to pick a transport data format, like JSON. You need to serialize El…
Comment linking /why-we-built-mini-elixir/
on “Lua for Elixir”Submitted Keyset cursors, not offsets, for Postgres pagination as a story · 66 points
HN discussionElixir is not a sandboxed language, so you can't just accept arbitrary Elixir programs from users and execute them inside of your application without security concerns. Lua, on the other hand, can be executed in a sandboxed fashion, limiting and constraining the reach of user programs. Check out Anthony Accomazzo's post about Mini-Elixir, which does a great job breaking this down much further https://blog.sequinstre…
Comment linking /why-we-built-mini-elixir/
on “Lua for Elixir”Submitted We fixed our documentation with the Diátaxis framework as a story · 61 points
HN discussionThis is another good one: https://blog.sequinstream.com/events-not-webhooks/
Comment linking /events-not-webhooks/
on “Webhooks Are Harder Than They Seem”Submitted What makes Elixir great for startups? as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted What makes Elixir great for startups as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted We Built Mini-Elixir as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted How we build forms in LiveView and LiveSvelte as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Postgres sequences can commit out-of-order as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Postgres looks eventually consistent (from the client) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Microsecond transforms: Building a fast sandbox for user code as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building a fast sandbox for user code as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Request-Reply in Postgres as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Patterns for forms in LiveView and LiveSvelte as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why pull-based pipelines are faster as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Time-based retention strategies in Postgres as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Request-Reply in Postgres as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Build your own SQS or Kafka with Postgres as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Postgres sequences can commit out-of-order as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why duplicates plague CDC pipelines and how to root them out (2025) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Streaming changes from Postgres: the architecture behind Sequin as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Using watermarks to coordinate change data capture in Postgres as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Time-based retention strategies in Postgres as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Time-based retention strategies in Postgres as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
