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Databases & storage: videos Hacker News recommends
Databases and storage: SQL, SQLite, Postgres, NoSQL, query engines, indexing, transactions, filesystems, storage engines, data modeling, stream processing, event sourcing. Below: every video in this topic that at least three HN users linked with real commentary, in at least three different months (54 talks, 4 lectures, 4 demos), best-scored first, with the comments on each video page.
- HN treats it as the canonical talk on simulation testing and a mind-blowing example of how far rigorous testing can go.
- HN commenters cite it as the talk that convinced them of immutability and functional programming.
- The go-to recommendation for learning DynamoDB data modeling, with many saying it made access-pattern-driven design click.
- Commenters repeatedly cite it as the talk that reframed how they think about caching, derived data and event sourcing.
- Treated as the go-to approachable yet deep primer on CRDTs and collaborative editing, recommended repeatedly in threads on Automerge, local-first software and OT versus CRDT.
- CMU Database Group lecture recommended in 6 different months by 6 HN users, 2020–2023Frequently recommended as the best free university course on database internals, praised for depth and Pavlo's presentation.
- HN repeatedly recommends it as a balanced, beginner-friendly overview of SQL versus NoSQL, and some teachers assign it to students.
- Fred Overflow talk recommended in 5 different months by 5 HN users, 2020–2026Cited as the classic rant on maps versus objects in discussions of data modeling and OOP.
- TigerBeetle talk recommended in 6 different months by 2 HN users, 2023–2025HN commenters, including TigerBeetle people, recommend it as the explanation of a methodology for building defect-free, high-assurance software.
- HN recommends Cantrill talks generally for their mix of industry history, technical depth and entertaining delivery, and this one is a favorite for storage and data integrity threads.
- Michigan Engineering lecture recommended in 5 different months by 5 HN users, 2015–2024HN points to it as a thoughtful, first-principles take from a Turing award winner that cuts through NoSQL and big data hype.
- Recommended as a fantastic introduction to declarative and Datalog-based distributed systems and failure modeling.
- Code & Supply talk recommended in 6 different months by 6 HN users, 2018–2025A perennial HN favorite whenever firmware, disks, ECC or opaque hardware come up, valued as both entertaining and sobering.
- Deirdré Straughan talk recommended in 4 different months by 4 HN users, 2016–2026HN recommends it as the definitive explanation of ZFS design straight from its inventors, with war stories about data integrity.
- Citus Data talk recommended in 5 different months by 4 HN users, 2016–2020HN commenters point to it as a first-hand overview of Heap's Postgres/Citus architecture and its distinctive indexing approach.
- Recommended as a detailed, candid case study of scaling a real system from zero users to millions.
- Code on the Beach talk recommended in 4 different months by 4 HN users, 2016–2022HN developers recommend it as the talk that changed how they model systems, and as a clear intro to event sourcing's motivations.
- Method talk recommended in 4 different months by 4 HN users, 2017–2024HN recommends it as an enthusiastic, funny talk straight from the creator, and cites it for facts like the name's pronunciation and Airbus support.
- tripflag demo recommended in 3 different months by 7 HN users, 2025–2026HN commenters call it a model demo video and the quickest way to see how much one developer packed into a self-hosted file server.
- HN points people to it as the clearest account of why Datomic is designed the way it is and of the problems with conventional database architecture.
- HN readers recommend it as a thorough, practical introduction to Postgres fundamentals and optimization for application developers.
- Redis talk recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2018–2023Recommended in graph database threads as a mind-blowing case for expressing graph analysis as linear algebra.
- Siebel School of Computing and Data Science lecture recommended in 3 different months by 2 HN users, 2018–2024Cited in many threads about academic incentives, paper counts and why academia struggles to produce working software.
- CMU Database Group talk recommended in 3 different months by 2 HN users, 2020–2026HN recommends it as the definitive talk from the implementer on DuckDB's motivation and design.
- LuceneSolrRevolution talk recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2019–2020HN recommends it as an instructive, easy-to-follow look at Lucene internals from a core committer.
- Recommended in cache-algorithm threads as a fun, informative walk through caching strategies and ARC.
- Tavis Rudd demo recommended in 3 different months by 2 HN users, 2014–2023HN points to it as a lost example of intuitive low-code tooling, and as inspiration for newer products.
- HN commenters recommend it as the main resource on Swift as an incremental successor to C++ and on how the interoperability works in practice.
- southeastlinuxfest talk recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2020–2021Recommended for the SQLite author's reasoned case for a different approach to version control, and as an introduction to Fossil.
- HN commenters recommend it to developers unfamiliar with how much leverage and intelligence there is in a SQL database.
- HN recommends it as a sampling of truly different programming paradigms beyond mainstream OOP.
- The Power of Prolog tutorial recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2022–2024HN recommends it as the best short introduction to what makes Prolog unique.
- New Relic talk recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2014–2022HN recommends it as an elegant argument for simple Unix tools replacing heavyweight Hadoop-style pipelines.
- Recommended as a compact preview of Kleppmann's data systems material, including from his book on the subject.
- krueggen demo recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2014–2018Used as a reference for an ahead-of-its-time end-user database tool, brought up in threads on Access clones, Smalltalk and data-entry tools.
- Linux.conf.au 2012 -- Ballarat, Australia talk recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2012–2023HN recommends it as the definitive explanation of XFS metadata performance fixes and how XFS was developed and made robust on Linux.
- Cited as a demonstration of the Pathom/graph approach to connecting APIs, as an alternative to GraphQL.
- Shared in outage and accidental-deletion threads as a relatable, well-told horror story.
- HN recommends it as a rich, concrete look at real-world system design and as evidence of YouTube's early Python stack.
- HN points to it as a solid, if long, introduction to B-epsilon trees and why BetrFS is built the way it is.
- OpenZFS talk recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2016–2022Recommended whenever ZFS encryption comes up as the authoritative explanation of how it was added and its trade-offs at scale.
- HN recommends it as an approachable talk on a total functional generalization of Datalog, by the language's author.
- HN points to it as a detailed, captivating talk by the Noria author, including a good explanation of deduplicating data between maps using unsafe.
- Palantir demo recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2022–2026Pointed to as the clearest explanation of what Foundry actually is, and for its polished software, though one commenter calls it dated now.
- Recommended as the best introduction to modern SQL standard features that textbooks skip.
- FreeBSD talk recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2021–2023HN points to it as the video explanation of how RAID-Z expansion works without block pointer rewrite.
- HN points to it as an authoritative look at DynamoDB internals and as evidence it is a complex distributed system.
- Local-First Conf talk recommended in 1 different month by 1 HN user, 2024–2025Cited in sync-engine threads as the origin story for Zero and for hybrid local and remote queries.
- Pointed to as the authoritative history of FFS from one of its original creators.
- AWS Events talk recommended in 1 different month by 1 HN user, 2020–2022Recommended as Rick Houlihan's definitive talk on modeling relational-style data in DynamoDB.
- HN cites it as Nubank's account of building a bank on Datomic and Clojure, and for what Datomic's temporal model enables.
- HN commenters list it among the best introductions to event sourcing and use it to illustrate storing read-only events instead of mutating state.
- HN points to it, including Gjengset himself, as a more digestible way into partially-stateful dataflow than the thesis text, mostly in caching and database threads.
- Cited as the memorable case for moving to SSDs and as an example of how swearing can make a talk stick.
- Domain-Driven Design Europe talk recommended in 1 different month by 1 HN user, 2016–2026HN commenters cite it in event sourcing threads for Young's views on when to use it, including advice against cross-application event sourcing.
- Local-First Conf talk recommended in 1 different month by 1 HN user, 2025Cited in sync-engine and local-first threads for Kleppmann's argument for a generic, standardised sync protocol or service.
- Arthur Gleckler talk recommended in 1 different month by 1 HN user, 2016–2020Pointed to as practical talk on off-heap memory and database programming in Lisp by experienced engineers.
- Cited as a useful taxonomy for pinning down what an event-driven design actually is.
- Andrea Ross talk recommended in 1 different month by 1 HN user, 2014–2017Recommended as a talk from SQLite's main author, and cited for the project's focus on backwards compatibility and for deployment anecdotes.
- Uber Engineering talk recommended in 1 different month by 1 HN user, 2018–2025HN points to it as the detailed explanation of why hexagons suit map grids, in threads about H3.
- Cited in backup and data-loss threads as a rare inside look at Google's backup practices, including its use of tape.
- HN refers to it as an honest, candid account of the common story of losing precious data to storage failure.
- Recommended as a first-hand intro from SQLite's creator that also teaches how a database engine is built.
- Kevin Fang comedy video recommended in 1 different month by 1 HN user, 2023–2024Shared as a funny, accurate retelling of a classic outage, especially on a bad ops day.
- Confluent, an IBM Company talk recommended in 1 different month by 1 HN user, 2018–2020HN posts it in Kafka-as-database debates and as an introduction to event logs and CQRS.
- Cited in ZFS and filesystem threads as the go-to source on ZFS limits and tuning for NVMe.
- HN cites it as the example of physically trucking data when network transfer is impractical.
- OpenZFS interview cited on HN 4 times, 2014–2023Cited as the authoritative explanation of why block pointer rewrite is so hard to implement in ZFS.
- Cited as the origin of the compilers-as-databases idea in discussions of IDEs and incremental tooling.
- Posted as a classic meme whenever MongoDB, NoSQL hype or tech fads come up.
Questions
What is the most recommended databases & storage video on Hacker News?
"Testing Distributed Systems w/ Deterministic Simulation" by Will Wilson by Strange Loop Conference: HN treats it as the canonical talk on simulation testing and a mind-blowing example of how far rigorous testing can go.
How is this databases & storage list ranked?
By HackerTube's score: the number of distinct months in which an HN comment recommended the video, plus half a point for every month with a strong recommendation. One viral thread counts less than steady recommendations over years.
Where do the videos come from?
From every Hacker News comment between 2007 and 2026 that linked a YouTube video, labeled by an AI model as a recommendation, a citation, a joke or a criticism. The list is published by HackerTube under ODC-By 1.0; this edition adds indexable pages and the comment context.