> now you have to create a database, create a user, grant that user access to the database, setup credentials and start using them.

CREATE ROLE dumbo WITH LOGIN PASSWORD 'fuck';

CREATE DATABASE dumbo OWNER dumbo;

It's that easy.

I only have to run these about once every year or two, and have to look them up every time.

Many developers don't run those commands very frequently, so they're easy to forget.

You can do all this pretty easily using `pgAdmin` without having to remember any commands. If you do this infrequently, then great use the GUI. If you do it frequently then learn the commands I guess :P `pgAdmin` can help with that too though as it usually shows you the queries it is running.

> I run into problems with the next steps: now you have to create a database, create a user, grant that user access to the database, setup credentials and start using them.

That's like complaining you need to break eggs when you want to make an omelette.

> That's like complaining you need to break eggs when you want to make an omelette.

I have a friend who we discovered didn't like cooking eggs because picking the shells out of the bowl was tedious. Turns out he was never taught how to crack an egg so he would just throw it in the bowl and have bits of shell everywhere. Point is that breaking eggs may not be so easy for everyone. (Of course, after describing to him how eggs are properly cracked, he was excited to try it out.)

Being necessary and being exhausting aren't mutually exclusive qualities.

But - why are the steps needed to create a database and setup credentials such a complex, manual process anyway? Why can't all those steps just be automated by a helper script that ships with postgres?

I reach for sqlite whenever I introduce SQL to people because its so much easier to get started with sqlite.

The reason that I reach for MySQL when introducing people to SQL is the formatted output, with nice tables and column names. Is there a simple way to get similar output with SQLite?

Yep! Just set sqlite into table mode:

    sqlite> .mode table
    sqlite> select * from example;
    +-----+----------+
    | id  |   foo    |
    +-----+----------+
    | 123 | afsd     |
    +-----+----------+

SQLite also has CSV, JSON, HTML and markdown modes - which is pretty neat!

Thank you!