pgAdmin 3 has worked well for me for years on the Mac,
on Windows, and on Linux. Not very native, but still very
usable and nice enough looking. When I want something
native, there are other tools on the Mac. But still, pgAdmin 3
had all the necessary features and I can get all the details
I might need for various scenarios.
pgAdmin 4 is badly misconceived. It's very slow to start, and
shows messages like "connecting to server" during the start.
I understand that's because it's a web app, with a frontend of
some sort talking to a backend server inside the app.
It has no proper menu bar on the Mac, and instead shows
its own yucky menu inside the app window.
Lots of controls animate to no useful purpose. Opening tree
branches for ex. shows a little useless animation. Delays
everywhere due to these. All the controls and buttons are
painfully gross.
Going all web-app works in a sense since there's only one
app to maintain and distribute, but it's just so horribly ugly.
I will avoid this app at all costs. I realize it's free and I'm not
forced to use it, but the admin tools available do affect some
users' decisions of which database to use. At least part of what
attracted me to Postgres in the first place was the decent
usability of pgAdmin 3, and the fact that it was far better than
the abysmal MySQL admin tools. Please, consider doing
something good for pgAdmin 5.
Regards,
—Ed
