Re: What databases have taught me

A honnest and valuable share.

Even though, I had no such experience with OO, I sympathize.

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.
Received on Mon Jul 03 2006 - 20:35:22 CEST