Re: The wisdom of the object mentors (Was: Searching OO Associations with RDBMS Persistence Models)

Bob Badour wrote:
> Marshall wrote:
>
> > And in swoops the application programmer to "save" the day
> > from the problem he invented! All he has to do is write that
> > subset of a DBMS that he needs today. Which will slowly,
> > over time, increase until it's a badly implemented, bug ridden,
> > ad hoc implementation of half of a database. This is
> > Spight's Law. You have to have a dbms, whether you
> > use a good one or reinvent it yourself, badly.
>
> Man, you sure are pushing hard for a legacy. Do you not intend to number
> your laws? Should we take that as Spight's First Law? Or Spight's Zeroth
> Law? And law of what?

Since I've mentioned it a few times in this thread, it may appear that I'm "pushing hard." But I coined the phrase in 2002, and have mentioned it only about ten times since then. I have never mentioned it in any odd numbered years, for example.

The fact that people routinely massively underestimate the power and importance of the dbms needs to be publicized. Because of this, you regularly hear people stating such ridiculous requirements as wanting to be able to swap out a dbms for a flat file!

And if we have learned anything from OOP, it is that a concept is much easier to sell if it has a catchy name!

(Oh, and I'll take "Spight's Zeroth," please.)

> Are we allowed to paraphrase? Like, for instance, would you accept
> someone reworking it to: "Spight's Law: Necessity is the mother of
> re-invention." ?

I like it!

> > PS. Props to Greenspun's Tenth.
>
> You and your obscure references to interesting geeks. You caused me to
> waste an entire afternoon reading various and sundry snippets from
> Greenspun's sites.

Heh. He's quite the writer.

Marshall Received on Fri Jun 02 2006 - 10:09:09 CEST