A bad workman blames his tools. WAS Re: What databases have taught me

From: George <george99may_at_gmail.com>
Date: 26 Jun 2006 16:09:10 -0700
Message-ID: <1151363350.209825.233660_at_y41g2000cwy.googlegroups.com>


JOG wrote:
> Well after a brief hiatus I have just ploughed through the whole 800
> posts of the OO vs RM thread. Some discouraging stuff indeed. Over the
> last few years a study of database technology, helped greatly by
> discussions in cdt, has educated my opinions significantly, and perhaps
> my albeit slow progress can be illuminative to others.
>
> - I started life as a procedural programmer.
> - I adopted OO and soon got the 'aha' click described by R. Martin.
> - I spent years coding large OO projects, with beautiful, elegant
> architectures.
> - I spent further years practically gnawing my arm off attempting to
> adapt my perfect OO designs as requirements inevitably shifted and
> exceptions arose.
> - I finally realised that my 'aha' was utterly illusionary, and that my
> code, being OO, was inevitably and irrecovably imprisoned in a
> hierarchical strait-jacket
>
> OO is hierarchy. Enforcing a hierarchy where none exists is an utterly
> dire and destructive artifice. If one does not recognize this, one is
> etiher wholly uneducated (given that the battle between
> hierarchy/networks and a relationship based models occurred decades
> ago) or has not been involved in enough large scale OO projects. Yet
> still this turgid "chinese doll" approach prevails through Java, C++
> and the bastard child of them all, XML.
>
> I still code via OO as I currently have no other preferable tools. And
> yes, I still absolutely take pride in my crafted generic OO designs.
> However I now don't waste precious time trying to perfect them, because
> I know they are by definition inflexible, brittle and flawed. So I make
> them lightweight and replacable, aware of the limitations of the
> neanderthal paradigm that we are currently lumped with.
>
> It really is amazing that IT as a field has so little to do with the
> study of 'Information', of its nature and how it ought be structured
> for optimal manipulation and integrity provision, and so much on a
> 'Technology' fetish.
>
> So apologies for the rant, but I find the current status quo very
> frustrating. I can only hope that this situation will change as the
> field matures and hierarchy-where it does not belong finally dies a
> long overdue death.

JOG you've written nothing about "what databases have taught you", the title is wrong, how 'bout:

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight's top 10 titles, (drrrr, drrrr, drum-roll....bara-bing):-

  1. "If I'm a bad programmer mommy, will OOP make me good?" 9."Hey, what's wrong with too much code, the more the merrier, right"? (bloat)
  2. "Design by buzzward compliance, what's wrong with that"? 7."Databases can be used to solve every problem in computer science".
  3. "Ok it's not even use-able but I'm makin' my code "super-re-usable" - right?
  4. "Nevermind the customer's project, here comes my framework" 4."Yes, I tried to think but it hurts".
  5. *All* those OO guys are self-agrandizing ignorants but all those db guys know where it's at.
  6. I use Java, Java is a well designed OOL, therefore all my code is well designed OOP.
  7. What, I thought you're suppose to use inheritence, all-the-time.

I hope that helps a bad workman who blames his tools. Received on Tue Jun 27 2006 - 01:09:10 CEST

Original text of this message