Why PostgreSQL's MVCC Design Choices Are Often Misunderstood

PostgreSQL's MVCC is bad. So is everyone else's

Critics often blame PostgreSQL's MVCC for bloat and write amplification, but these are deliberate design trade-offs, not defects. Every database engine handling concurrent reads and writes faces similar challenges, just with different costs. I demonstrate how PostgreSQL's specific answers to versioning questions create known overheads, while alternatives simply shift the burden to writers, readers, or background processes. The real issue isn't the mechanism itself, but understanding what every system sacrifices to achieve concurrency.