{"slug": "apache-kafka", "name": "Apache Kafka", "category": "communication", "category_name": "Email and chat", "description": "", "recommenders": 8, "commenters": 64, "warners": 9, "score": 11.133, "rising": -1.62, "first": "2025-11-02", "latest": "2026-10-21", "why": "Because you can throw lava at it and it will eat it.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 9, "neutral": 57, "compare": 8, "warn": 9}, "spark": [2, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Because you can throw lava at it and it will eat it.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "apache.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://kafka.apache.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Kafka", "Apache Kafka"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 802874208, "item_id": 50179638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50179638", "by": "mrkeen", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Kafka as the example.", "excerpt": "> Revolut would own the database in my example. If you have a protocol for interacting with your own database, you either need to rule out interacting with other systems (i.e. you have Revolut credits and you can only use them in the Revolut store,) or create a second protocol for inter-system transfers, in which case you have two protocols, and that second protocol won't play nicely with the first - e.g. partner ban", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Revolut down as users report app not working"}, {"id": 782598498, "item_id": 48912406, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48912406", "by": "jdw64", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I don't know the internals of Kafka, RabbitMQ, or PostgreSQL. I just know how to use them. And yet they work fine.", "excerpt": "Since GPT 5.2, AI has been writing code much better than I can. In 5.6, it beat Tourlist in competitive coding. After seeing that, I only practice about an hour a day just to keep the feel of coding. Honestly, rather than pointless debates about whether human coding is bad or AI coding is bad, I just think it's good to build tools that help me understand the world. I don't really care whether it's hand-coded or bad c", "context": "on-site programmer", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Tower Keeps Rising"}, {"id": 780718192, "item_id": 48794887, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794887", "by": "mrkeen", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For multiple nodes, I use something like Kafka, where you write down one event, and have two systems subscribe to it", "excerpt": "This is not a bad question! If you flip it and instead ask \"how do I write something that can't fail?\" you might find some interesting ground. The best things I know about are static type-checking, pure functions and totality. Different languages provide more or less help with these things. It's perfectly fine to do 'two things which don't fail or cause other things to fail'. Forgive the digression, but there is an '", "context": "", "use_case": "event log between services", "switched_from": "", "story": "If you're a button, you have one job"}, {"id": 762673904, "item_id": 47667119, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47667119", "by": "roscas", "date": "2026-04-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Because you can throw lava at it and it will eat it.", "excerpt": "Oh what a huge article and a good read. Thank you. Ok, let's go. Why people use Kafka? Because you can throw lava at it and it will eat it. RabbitMQ is also very good, don't have production experience on it, so I leave it for a specialist. Redis (or valkey.io) is also amazing and very fast. But for a tram system or any system that needs persistent record for a period of time, I use a Kafka cluster with minimum of 3 s", "context": "runs Kafka clusters in production", "use_case": "persistent streaming records", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Replaced Kafka, Redis, and RabbitMQ with One Tool \u2013 A Deep Dive into NATS"}, {"id": 755734305, "item_id": 47233394, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47233394", "by": "dlandiak", "date": "2026-03-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We built TBMQ on Kafka because it's battle-tested at scale across the industry", "excerpt": "Hi HN! I'm Dima from the ThingsBoard team \u2014 the company behind the open-source IoT platform and TBMQ, our MQTT broker built on top of Apache Kafka. Most MQTT brokers hit a ceiling when you need to scale horizontally or survive node failures without message loss. We built TBMQ on Kafka because it's battle-tested at scale across the industry \u2014 you get fault tolerance, high throughput, and horizontal scalability as a fo", "context": "", "use_case": "Message streaming foundation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: TBMQ \u2013 Live demo of a high-performance MQTT broker built on Kafka"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 793260946, "item_id": 49578809, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49578809", "by": "GeniusN", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I built QueueForge after repeatedly dealing with failed messages in RabbitMQ and Kafka.", "excerpt": "I built QueueForge after repeatedly dealing with failed messages in RabbitMQ and Kafka. It provides a UI for inspecting messages in DLQs/DLTs and retrying them without having to work directly with CLI tools. I'm interested in feedback from people who operate RabbitMQ or Kafka in production. In particular, I'd like to know how you currently handle failed messages and what you'd want from a tool like this. https://queu", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: QueueForge \u2013 Manage RabbitMQ DLQs and Kafka DLTs"}, {"id": 790941568, "item_id": 49433848, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433848", "by": "adesh_nalpet", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Where Kafka starts to fall short is routing.", "excerpt": "Precisely this! I might even add a section in the docs, \u201cNot a replacement for Kafka,\u201d under the FAQ. Where Kafka starts to fall short is routing. If you want to access the data of one user from user-events-topic, that\u2019s expensive to do. Most other streaming technologies are built around the same design, such as Kinesis. There are other implementations that support the Kafka wire protocol and are cheaper in exchange ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: PicoMQ \u2013 Durable Streams over HTTP, on object storage"}, {"id": 780362017, "item_id": 48772626, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48772626", "by": "teleforce", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm looking at you Kafka!", "excerpt": "I'm glad you mentioned DBOS. I personally think DB based OS or more accurately data-centric OS is the way to go to simplify all the distributed applications (I'm looking at you Kafka!). In addition to DBOS please check the original data-centric OS proposed by the MIT team based on D4M technology. This new architecture data-centric OS similar to TabulaROSA in concept where data is managed and governed by mathematical ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Postgres transactions are a distributed systems superpower"}, {"id": 755970384, "item_id": 47248149, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248149", "by": "busterarm", "date": "2026-03-04", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I owned Kafka and RabbitMQ clusters. Zero consideration was given to message size recommendations", "excerpt": "Honestly I think that the real result of this is developers that don't really understand the underlying tooling and invent all sorts of bad architectures. One common example I cite is at one job I owned Kafka and RabbitMQ clusters. Zero consideration was given to message size recommendations and we had incidents on the regular because some application was shoving multi-hundred megabyte messages into RMQ. They'd do ot", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Nobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity"}]}], "who": [{"by": "achenet", "context": "software developer and researcher with half a decade of experience", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50022465", "date": "2026-10-09"}, {"by": "joaokwanza", "context": "senior backend engineer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49986323", "date": "2026-10-07"}, {"by": "jon_north", "context": "Contract backend engineer seeking work", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49525256", "date": "2026-09-01"}, {"by": "craigtp", "context": "Senior Software Engineer, Systems Architect", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49275197", "date": "2026-08-12"}, {"by": "mathewsclint28", "context": "Backend lead on Ford Pro's EV charging platform", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49229048", "date": "2026-08-08"}, {"by": "jdw64", "context": "on-site programmer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48912406", "date": "2026-07-14"}, {"by": "brahmanithota", "context": "Data engineer, 5 years, healthcare financial data", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808312", "date": "2026-07-06"}, {"by": "yorktanaka2024", "context": "Senior software engineer, 10+ yrs", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48768021", "date": "2026-07-02"}, {"by": "aswanipranjal", "context": "Senior backend engineer with 7+ years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48765368", "date": "2026-07-02"}, {"by": "swarcs", "context": "Java software architect, 20+ years; runs SWARCS as B2B contractor", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48760449", "date": "2026-07-02"}, {"by": "adurs2002", "context": "job seeker in St. Louis, MO", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757637", "date": "2026-07-02"}, {"by": "gnavadev", "context": "Just graduated, job seeker", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754491", "date": "2026-07-01"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["streaming data architecture", "event streaming", "event-driven messaging", "streaming data platform", "messaging", "telemetry message streaming"], "compared": [{"slug": "postgresql", "name": "PostgreSQL", "co": 41, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "redis", "name": "Redis", "co": 25, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kubernetes", "name": "Kubernetes", "co": 17, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "rabbitmq", "name": "RabbitMQ", "co": 15, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "amazon-web-services", "name": "Amazon Web Services", "co": 15, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "docker", "name": "Docker", "co": 15, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "redpanda", "name": "Redpanda", "co": 14, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "terraform", "name": "Terraform", "co": 13, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 797357296, "item_id": 49834831, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49834831", "by": "fvaleri", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm the author. This is a new feature design that was just accepted by the community", "excerpt": "I'm the author. This is a new feature design that was just accepted by the community and took us a significant amount of time to complete. The post is just a summary of that work. It's not AI written, but I used it to improve a couple phrases.", "context": "", "use_case": "cluster mirroring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Data liberation: Apache Kafka's native cluster mirroring"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747975", "title": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49922568", "title": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357724", "title": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2026)", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46857487", "title": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2026)", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46690779", "title": "Small Kafka: Tansu and SQLite on a free t3.micro", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47975570", "title": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2026)", "mentions": 3}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"compare": 2, "recommend": 2, "neutral": 5}, "2025-12": {"compare": 2, "neutral": 4, "recommend": 1, "warn": 2}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 8, "warn": 3, "compare": 1}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 6, "recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 5, "recommend": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 7, "compare": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 4}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 7, "warn": 1, "recommend": 2, "compare": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 2, "warn": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 6, "recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802874208, "item_id": 50179638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50179638", "by": "mrkeen", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Kafka as the example.", "excerpt": "> Revolut would own the database in my example. If you have a protocol for interacting with your own database, you either need to rule out interacting with other systems (i.e. you have Revolut credits and you can only use them in the Revolut store,) or create a second protocol for inter-system transfers, in which case you have two protocols, and that second protocol won't play nicely with the first - e.g. partner ban", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Revolut down as users report app not working"}, {"id": 801407428, "item_id": 50087964, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50087964", "by": "akshit_29", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "replaced a 20-30 person auction-scheduling team with an event-driven system on Celery and Kafka.", "excerpt": "Location: Gurugram, India (IST, UTC+5:30) Remote: Yes, remote only. 4-6h daily overlap with US Eastern, full overlap with EU. Contractor or EOR. Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Python, Django/DRF, FastAPI, Celery, Kafka, PostgreSQL, Redis, Next.js, LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, MCP, pgvector, Pipecat, AWS, Azure, Kubernetes Resume/CV: https://akshit.wtf Email: ahujaakshit20@gmail.com Backend engineer, around 4 ", "context": "", "use_case": "event-driven messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 800359445, "item_id": 50022465, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50022465", "by": "achenet", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Kafka", "excerpt": "Location: Lyon, France Willing to Relocate: Yes, to Barcelona, Roma, Hamburg, Koln, Den Haag, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Stockholm or Switzerland. Full Remote: Yes. I offer a discount for full-remote work, because it saves me the hassle of relocation and commuting :) Technologies: Go, Rust, C, Elixir, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, web technologies (HTML/CSS, frameworks, browser APIs), Bash, Zsh, Fish, Linux, FreeBSD, My", "context": "software developer and researcher with half a decade of experience", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 799781169, "item_id": 49986323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49986323", "by": "joaokwanza", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "PostgreSQL, Kafka, Redis", "excerpt": "Location: Luanda, Angola (UTC+1) Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes, with visa sponsorship: Portugal/EU, Canada, UK, Australia; open to a retention agreement on relocation costs Technologies: TypeScript/Node.js, Go, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Redis, AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, CloudFormation), Next.js/React, LLM agents, MCP R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://joaokwanza.com/cv.pdf Email: kwanzajoao04@gmail.com Senior backend & ", "context": "senior backend engineer", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 798970764, "item_id": 49935672, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49935672", "by": "whosgotch", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "FastMCP, Kafka, Docker", "excerpt": "Location: Kyiv, Ukraine Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: Python, Go, JavaScript, TypeScript, Lua, C, SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Django, FastAPI, Flask, Odoo, Redis, Elasticsearch, FastMCP, Kafka, Docker, Grafana Resume/CV: Software engineer with 5 years of experience, split between backend systems and AI tooling. At GlobalLogic I built the internal AI coding platform now used as the s", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 798907680, "item_id": 49931730, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49931730", "by": "tieoneease", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "redesigned it on top of kafka", "excerpt": "Location: Between US and Taiwan Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: C++, Go, Java, Scala, Kotlin, Python, Node, Typescript/Javascript, React, Svelte, Kafka, PostgreSQL, Kafka, LLMs R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://tieoneease.github.io/resume/Resume-Sam-Chung-2026.pdf Email: chungsam95@gmail.com Engineering leader with 12+ years experience from hypergrowth startups to quantitative trading firms. At Qualtrics, I wrote ", "context": "", "use_case": "Event streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 798772817, "item_id": 49923301, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49923301", "by": "jon_north", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "using Redpanda/Kafka on Azure+Terraform", "excerpt": "SEEKING WORK - Contract, Remote, USA, backend engineer I am a backend expert, having built and maintained mission critical, low latency and highly available systems for many companies over the last 10 years, in addition to over 20 total years of software development experience. I learn new things extremely quickly. AWS preferred but not required (I hold a variety of certs, available here: https://www.credly.com/users", "context": "", "use_case": "Streaming data architecture", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 793260946, "item_id": 49578809, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49578809", "by": "GeniusN", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I built QueueForge after repeatedly dealing with failed messages in RabbitMQ and Kafka.", "excerpt": "I built QueueForge after repeatedly dealing with failed messages in RabbitMQ and Kafka. It provides a UI for inspecting messages in DLQs/DLTs and retrying them without having to work directly with CLI tools. I'm interested in feedback from people who operate RabbitMQ or Kafka in production. In particular, I'd like to know how you currently handle failed messages and what you'd want from a tool like this. https://queu", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: QueueForge \u2013 Manage RabbitMQ DLQs and Kafka DLTs"}, {"id": 792404097, "item_id": 49525256, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49525256", "by": "jon_north", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "using Redpanda/Kafka on Azure+Terraform", "excerpt": "SEEKING WORK - Contract, Remote, USA, backend engineer I am a backend expert, having built and maintained mission critical, low latency and highly available systems for many companies over the last 10 years, in addition to over 20 total years of software development experience. I learn new things extremely quickly. AWS preferred but not required (I hold a variety of certs, available here: https://www.credly.com/users", "context": "Contract backend engineer seeking work", "use_case": "Streaming data platform", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (September 2026)"}, {"id": 790941568, "item_id": 49433848, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49433848", "by": "adesh_nalpet", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Where Kafka starts to fall short is routing.", "excerpt": "Precisely this! I might even add a section in the docs, \u201cNot a replacement for Kafka,\u201d under the FAQ. Where Kafka starts to fall short is routing. If you want to access the data of one user from user-events-topic, that\u2019s expensive to do. Most other streaming technologies are built around the same design, such as Kinesis. There are other implementations that support the Kafka wire protocol and are cheaper in exchange ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: PicoMQ \u2013 Durable Streams over HTTP, on object storage"}, {"id": 788403161, "item_id": 49275197, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49275197", "by": "craigtp", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "RabbitMQ/Kafka", "excerpt": "Location: Liverpool, England Remote: Yes (Remote only) Willing to relocate: No Technologies: C#, .NET Core, ASP.NET, SQL Server/MySQL/PostgreSQL/MongoDB/EventStoreDB/Redis, RabbitMQ/Kafka, CQRS/Event Sourcing, Azure/AWS. R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://craigtp.co.uk/cv Email: craig [at] craigtp.co.uk Hi. I'm Craig. I'm an experienced Senior Software Engineer, Systems Architect and Microsoft Certified Professional with a passion f", "context": "Senior Software Engineer, Systems Architect", "use_case": "Messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2026)"}, {"id": 787664768, "item_id": 49229048, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49229048", "by": "mathewsclint28", "date": "2026-08-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "6M+ telemetry messages/day through Kafka at 99.9% data integrity", "excerpt": "Location: Kochi, India Remote: Yes (only) Willing to relocate: Yes - EU/UK for the right team Technologies: Go, Kafka, gRPC/Protobuf, OCPP 1.6/2.0.1, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Docker, AWS, NestJS/Node, TypeScript, Python, Datadog R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://clint-mathews.github.io/CLINT-MATHEWS.pdf Email: mathewsclint28@gmail.com Backend lead on Ford Pro's EV charging platform \u2014 8,200 connected chargers, 6M+ telemetry messa", "context": "Backend lead on Ford Pro's EV charging platform", "use_case": "telemetry message streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2026)"}, {"id": 782598498, "item_id": 48912406, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48912406", "by": "jdw64", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I don't know the internals of Kafka, RabbitMQ, or PostgreSQL. I just know how to use them. And yet they work fine.", "excerpt": "Since GPT 5.2, AI has been writing code much better than I can. In 5.6, it beat Tourlist in competitive coding. After seeing that, I only practice about an hour a day just to keep the feel of coding. Honestly, rather than pointless debates about whether human coding is bad or AI coding is bad, I just think it's good to build tools that help me understand the world. I don't really care whether it's hand-coded or bad c", "context": "on-site programmer", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Tower Keeps Rising"}, {"id": 780932994, "item_id": 48808312, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808312", "by": "brahmanithota", "date": "2026-07-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "built the Kafka-based CDC streaming architecture", "excerpt": "Location: Columbia, Maryland Remote: Preferred Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: SQL, Python, PySpark, AWS, Palantir, Snowflake, dbt, Databricks R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://blue-cloud-565.linkyhost.com Email: thotasadhvika@gmail.com Data Engineer of 5 years of experience with hands-on ownership of financial data infrastructure in high-stakes, regulated environments. At Centene Corporation, I own end-to-end pipelines proc", "context": "Data engineer, 5 years, healthcare financial data", "use_case": "CDC streaming for reporting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 780913090, "item_id": 48807068, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48807068", "by": "wuliwong", "date": "2026-07-06", "stance": "compare", "quote": "If I am at the scale where I really want Kafka, it is probably for performance and I just can't believe there's anyway Postgres could provide that.", "excerpt": "For context, I am mainly talking about my personal projects, ideas I am trying out, MVPs/prototypes for potential new businesses, etc. I have started just using Postgres to back queues. It is simpler (although I have spun up new apps with Redis so many times it is only a small improvement) but more importantly it is cheaper. I really do try a lot of stuff out, so completely removing a infrastructure piece is a nice m", "context": "builds personal projects and MVPs", "use_case": "high-scale messaging", "switched_from": "", "story": "You probably don't need another database"}, {"id": 780718192, "item_id": 48794887, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794887", "by": "mrkeen", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For multiple nodes, I use something like Kafka, where you write down one event, and have two systems subscribe to it", "excerpt": "This is not a bad question! If you flip it and instead ask \"how do I write something that can't fail?\" you might find some interesting ground. The best things I know about are static type-checking, pure functions and totality. Different languages provide more or less help with these things. It's perfectly fine to do 'two things which don't fail or cause other things to fail'. Forgive the digression, but there is an '", "context": "", "use_case": "event log between services", "switched_from": "", "story": "If you're a button, you have one job"}, {"id": 780398000, "item_id": 48774875, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48774875", "by": "__s", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "For kafka connector we had a design partner", "excerpt": "Sai is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=saisrurampur Maybe we were saved by being acquired before hiring sales. Sai knew the problem & understood customers. He'd sometimes oversell a bit, but managed it: kept pulse of capacity for new development, would ask about how hard requested features were, would feel out customer intent & guide customer adapt to what was already there When we had our pepepizza moment, ther", "context": "", "use_case": "Connector integration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Half-Baked Product"}, {"id": 780362017, "item_id": 48772626, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48772626", "by": "teleforce", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm looking at you Kafka!", "excerpt": "I'm glad you mentioned DBOS. I personally think DB based OS or more accurately data-centric OS is the way to go to simplify all the distributed applications (I'm looking at you Kafka!). In addition to DBOS please check the original data-centric OS proposed by the MIT team based on D4M technology. This new architecture data-centric OS similar to TabulaROSA in concept where data is managed and governed by mathematical ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Postgres transactions are a distributed systems superpower"}, {"id": 780288341, "item_id": 48768021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48768021", "by": "yorktanaka2024", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Kafka", "excerpt": "Location: Windsor, ON N8Y 3J8, Canada Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: AI(LLMs, Multi-Agent workflow, Automation, Langchain, LangGraph, LangSmith, RAG, MCP) + Full Stack(Typescript, Python, .NET) + DevOps/Cloud Infra(AWS, GCP, Terraform, CI/CD) + RabbitMQ/Kafka + Redis + PostgreSQL/pgVector + Microservices R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://yorktanaka.online/cv Email: york.tiger.2024@gmail.com Senior Software Engin", "context": "Senior software engineer, 10+ yrs", "use_case": "Event streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 780245888, "item_id": 48765368, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48765368", "by": "aswanipranjal", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Kafka-backed observability pipelines processing 12M+ events/day", "excerpt": "Location: Bengaluru, India Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes, especially Europe / Singapore / UAE Technologies: Go, Python, Java, Kotlin, Kafka, PostgreSQL, AWS, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Prometheus, Grafana, FastAPI, TypeScript R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: available upon request Email: aswani.pranjal@gmail.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranjalaswani/ Senior backend engineer with 7+ years of experience buildin", "context": "Senior backend engineer with 7+ years", "use_case": "event streaming pipelines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 780167186, "item_id": 48760449, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48760449", "by": "swarcs", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Apache Kafka", "excerpt": "Location: Novi Sad, Serbia (Europe) Remote: Yes (CET/GMT+2, highly experienced with US time zones) Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Java (Modern LTS / JDK 21-26), Spring Boot/Cloud, PostgreSQL, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes (MicroK8s), Elasticsearch, Neo4j, Redis, Hibernate, Linux, Infrastructure & Platform Engineering. Website: https://swarcs.com GitHub: https://github.com/boskomijin LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/i", "context": "Java software architect, 20+ years; runs SWARCS as B2B contractor", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 780122203, "item_id": 48757637, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757637", "by": "adurs2002", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Technologies:", "excerpt": "Location: St. Louis, MO, USA Remote: Yes (open to in-office, no preference) Willing to relocate: Yes (anywhere in the US) Technologies: Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, SQL, Java, C++, R, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, Pandas, NumPy, React, Node.js, FastAPI, Socket.IO, Streamlit, Vue.js, Kafka, Flink, Git, AWS, Docker, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Snowflake, Apache Airflow, Spark, Gemini/OpenAI APIs R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://agr", "context": "job seeker in St. Louis, MO", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 780071871, "item_id": 48754491, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754491", "by": "gnavadev", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Kafka", "excerpt": "Location: Currently in Corvallis, OR. JUST GRADUATED, LETS GOOOOOOOOO Remote: Preferred, also open to in-person Willing to relocate: Yes, anywhere in the US Technologies: - Backend: Python, Django (Vanilla & DRF), FastAPI, Celery, PostgreSQL - Frontend: TypeScript, React, Vue, Next.js - DevOps/Cloud: AWS (S3, Lambda, DynamoDB), Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins - AI/ML: PyTorch, TensorFlow, SciKit-learn, OpenCV - Other: Ka", "context": "Just graduated, job seeker", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 773903712, "item_id": 48368982, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48368982", "by": "aswanipranjal", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "built a Kafka-based event pipeline", "excerpt": "Location: Bengaluru, India (IST, UTC+5:30) Remote: Yes \u2014 comfortable with EU/US hour overlap Willing to relocate: Yes (any country) Technologies: Go, Python, TypeScript, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Kafka, REST APIs, AWS, GCP, Docker, LLM APIs (OpenAI/Anthropic), RAG R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://aswanipranjal.github.io/resume.pdf GitHub: https://github.com/aswanipranjal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranjal-aswani-912bb8a3 Ema", "context": "backend engineer, 7+ years", "use_case": "event pipeline", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 773881461, "item_id": 48367591, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48367591", "by": "emreterzi", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "microservices price tracker with Kafka and gRPC", "excerpt": "Location: Samsun, Turkey (UTC+3) Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: Go, Node.js, TypeScript, React, Next.js, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, Docker, AWS, Expo R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://emrecanterzi.com/cv.pdf Email: terzi.6112@gmail.com Full-stack engineer leaning backend. Built a Go TCP proxy that defeats Turkish ISP deep packet inspection via custom TLS fragmentation (open source). Also built a microservices pri", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 773738725, "item_id": 48358670, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48358670", "by": "Wolframite", "date": "2026-06-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Redis, Apache Kafka", "excerpt": "Location: Lagos, Nigeria (GMT+1) Remote: Yes, fully remote. Willing to relocate: Depends (Visa sponsorship required). Email: Macaulaypraise7@gmail.com R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13SHRZQj5UFiJqZuEKHuNAf9RCLLevxEY/ Projects: https://github.com/macaulaypraise Technologies: Backend: Python (Asynchronous/FastAPI, Django, Flask, Asyncio), PostgreSQL (PostGIS), Redis, Apache Kafka, Bash, Python standard libr", "context": "Backend and product architect", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 773731906, "item_id": 48358244, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48358244", "by": "jon_north", "date": "2026-06-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Bash, Kafka, Redpanda", "excerpt": "Location: USA Remote: Preferred Willing to relocate: Maybe Expert backend developer primarily focused on data engineering, mission critical/low latency/highly available systems, and AWS (certs: https://www.credly.com/users/jon-north.ad78f0c8). Happy to deal with greenfield or legacy or any mix of the two. I learn new things extremely quickly. I prefer long term contract work, though I\u2019ll help you with smaller things ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 769936936, "item_id": 48121058, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48121058", "by": "utsavtulsyan", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Java/Rust low-latency services with Kafka/Cassandra", "excerpt": "Location: Gurgaon, India Remote: Yes, remote-first preferred. Open to strong hybrid/office roles in India. Willing to relocate: Not immediately. Open to remote global roles; visa sponsorship needed for US/on-site relocation. Technologies: Python, Java, TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Node.js, Spring Boot, Flask, Azure OpenAI, RAG, Azure AI Search, Cosmos DB, Kafka, Cassandra, Kubernetes, Docker, Rust, PostgreSQL, Mong", "context": "", "use_case": "low-latency services", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2026)"}, {"id": 769707335, "item_id": 48106708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48106708", "by": "DeathArrow", "date": "2026-05-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The whole stack is open source, Kubernetes, Docker, Hashicorp tools, Postgres, Redis, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, NATS, Kafka, Prometheus, Elastic Search, Kibana, Grafana", "excerpt": "Hmm, I am working on C# microservices based apps since 6 years ago. And I always deployed on cloud using Linux, usually in Kubernetes. I used Google Cloud and AWS beside Azure. The whole stack is open source, Kubernetes, Docker, Hashicorp tools, Postgres, Redis, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, NATS, Kafka, Prometheus, Elastic Search, Kibana, Grafana and so on and so forth.", "context": "C# microservices developer, 6 years", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "If AI Writes Your Code, Why Use Python?"}, {"id": 769647638, "item_id": 48102977, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48102977", "by": "bryanmdavis254", "date": "2026-05-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "event-driven systems (Kafka, SQS)", "excerpt": "Location: St. Augustine, FL Remote: Yes Technologies: \u2022 AI / GenAI: LLMs (OpenAI, Claude, Vertex AI, Llama), RAG, Agentic systems (LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex), MCP, prompt engineering, chat + voice agents \u2022 Backend: Python (FastAPI, Django), Node.js, microservices, event-driven systems (Kafka, SQS), REST, GraphQL \u2022 Cloud: AWS, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability \u2022 Frontend: React, Next.js, TypeScript ", "context": "9+ years full stack, GenAI focus", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2026)"}, {"id": 768637161, "item_id": 48039822, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039822", "by": "craigtp", "date": "2026-05-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "RabbitMQ/Kafka", "excerpt": "SEEKING WORK Location: Liverpool, England Remote: Yes (Remote only) Willing to relocate: No Technologies: C#, .NET Core, ASP.NET, SQL Server/MySQL/PostgreSQL/MongoDB/EventStoreDB/Redis, RabbitMQ/Kafka, CQRS/Event Sourcing, Azure/AWS. R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://craigtp.co.uk/cv Email: craig [at] craigtp.co.uk Hi. I'm Craig. I'm an experienced Senior Software Engineer, Systems Architect and Microsoft Certified Professional wit", "context": "Senior Software Engineer, Systems Architect", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (May 2026)"}, {"id": 767801617, "item_id": 47987601, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47987601", "by": "sudonem", "date": "2026-05-02", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Kafka still wins for very large data pipelines", "excerpt": "There\u2019s obviously no single solution, it won\u2019t make sense for all use cases, but NATS is far more lightweight, very simple to configure and deploy, has very few dependencies and offers incredibly low latency. NATS with Jetstream also closes the gap even further. Kafka still wins for very large data pipelines (hundreds of terabytes or petabytes), complex stream processing, or very long retention requirements for messa", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is Apache Kafka and how does it work?"}, {"id": 767689681, "item_id": 47980605, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47980605", "by": "jon_north", "date": "2026-05-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Redpanda/Kafka on Azure+Terraform", "excerpt": "SEEKING WORK - Contract, Remote, USA, backend engineer I am a backend expert, having built and maintained mission critical, low latency and highly available systems for many companies over the last 10 years, in addition to over 20 total years of software development experience. I learn new things extremely quickly. AWS preferred but not required (I hold a variety of certs, available here: https://www.credly.com/users", "context": "", "use_case": "streaming data architecture", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (May 2026)"}, {"id": 767617620, "item_id": 47976101, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47976101", "by": "RathoreAnkur", "date": "2026-05-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Scale Kafka/NiFi ingestion pipelines", "excerpt": "Location: Lucknow, India Remote: Yes (Worldwide) Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Rust (Aya, Tokio, eBPF), Python (FastAPI, Django), Go, Kafka, AWS, Kubernetes, Linux Kernel ABI. R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://ankurrathore.net.in/Ankur_Rathore_Architect.pdf GitHub: https://github.com/AnkurRathore Email: rathore.ankur@gmail.com I am a Lead Systems Architect with 12 years of experience specializing in high-throughput distribu", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2026)"}, {"id": 767606610, "item_id": 47975413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47975413", "by": "hernandela", "date": "2026-05-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "alongside AWS, Kafka, and Postgres", "excerpt": "Amperity is an enterprise Customer Data Platform (CDP) that processes massive, highly fragmented datasets for global brands to build unified customer profiles. We are actively expanding our foundational Engineering Hub in Argentina. Our engineering teams operate as first-class peers to our US headquarters, building out the core distributed systems and data infrastructure that power our AI-accelerated workflows. Our S", "context": "", "use_case": "data streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 765324513, "item_id": 47832782, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47832782", "by": "Queuey", "date": "2026-04-20", "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Hey HN, Most integration failures look like data problems. They\u2019re not. In my experience, they\u2019re almost always delivery problems. An event never arrives. Or it arrives twice. Or out of order. And everything looks fine until something breaks. I\u2019ve seen this more than once in production systems integrating with external APIs. Typical setup is webhooks + some retry logic + logs. When something fails mid-flight, debuggi", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 764649906, "item_id": 47790619, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47790619", "by": "porridgeraisin", "date": "2026-04-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "we wrote from services to a kafka queue first", "excerpt": "Yeah, at previous work we used both as well. The transition from prom to vm was \"ongoing\" and from the time I joined to the time I left we did parallel writes to both. Never faced issues with either. If I remember correctly, we wrote from services to a kafka queue first, and then a consumer took that and pushed it to (both) the metrics endpoint(s).", "context": "", "use_case": "Message queue", "switched_from": "", "story": "Airbnb discloses a billion-series Prometheus metrics pipeline"}, {"id": 762673904, "item_id": 47667119, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47667119", "by": "roscas", "date": "2026-04-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Because you can throw lava at it and it will eat it.", "excerpt": "Oh what a huge article and a good read. Thank you. Ok, let's go. Why people use Kafka? Because you can throw lava at it and it will eat it. RabbitMQ is also very good, don't have production experience on it, so I leave it for a specialist. Redis (or valkey.io) is also amazing and very fast. But for a tram system or any system that needs persistent record for a period of time, I use a Kafka cluster with minimum of 3 s", "context": "runs Kafka clusters in production", "use_case": "persistent streaming records", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Replaced Kafka, Redis, and RabbitMQ with One Tool \u2013 A Deep Dive into NATS"}, {"id": 762656905, "item_id": 47666056, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47666056", "by": "Steven0614", "date": "2026-04-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, Kafka, PostgreSQL, Redis", "excerpt": "Location: West, Texas (CST) Remote: Yes (Prefer async-first) Willing to relocate: No Technologies: * Languages/Frameworks: TypeScript/Node.js (NestJS), Python (FastAPI/Django), Go, C#, C++, Rust. Frontend: React, Next.js, React Native, TailwindCSS, Three.js. AI/ML: LangChain, RAG pipelines, Vector DBs, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, PyTorch, Computer Vision (VIO/SLAM). Infra/DevOps: AWS (ECS, Lambda, SageMaker), GCP, Terrafo", "context": "Senior full-stack engineer, former solo founder", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2026)"}, {"id": 762434242, "item_id": 47652140, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652140", "by": "Amarnadh_Dodda", "date": "2026-04-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Developed a real-time data pipeline with Kafka + Neo4j", "excerpt": "Location: Phoenix, AZ (open to US roles) Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: Python, SQL (PostgreSQL), Apache Airflow, Kafka, Spark, AWS (S3), Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, React, Node.js, Neo4j, Supabase, Vector DBs (pgvector), REST APIs Resume/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rOI_TsGfxGi6WLB5tXA47AqHG5gy7auE/view About me: I\u2019m a Master\u2019s student in Software Engineering at ASU (GPA: 4.0) with hands-o", "context": "Master's student in Software Engineering; job seeker", "use_case": "Real-time data pipeline", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2026)"}]}