Demo launch on HackerNews retrospective

QuestDB's team embarked on an unconventional experiment by publicly exposing their high-performance, SQL-based time series database on the internet, allowing users to test its capabilities with real-world datasets like the NYC Taxi Database. This bold move aimed to showcase the database's ability to handle complex and large-scale queries efficiently, despite being underutilized on a powerful AWS instance. The experiment revealed both the database's strengths, such as sub-second response times for most queries, and areas for improvement, like performance issues with where clauses and group by operations. Despite encountering syntax errors and a few unsuccessful attempts at malicious activity, the database impressed users with its speed and robustness, sparking significant interest and positive feedback from the tech community. The developers are using the insights gained from the experiment to refine QuestDB further, with plans to enhance its performance and functionality based on user interactions and feedback.