Re: Real World (Re: Mixing OO and DB)

Cimode wrote:
> On 17 mar, 21:19, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail..._at_dmitry-kazakov.de>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:43:45 -0700 (PDT), topmind wrote:
> > > rpost wrote:
> >
> > >> OK, it's partly abstract and intangible, but in the end money buys
> > >> you food, laws can make people go to jail, etc.
> >
> > > Yes, abstract ideas can *result* in tangible results. Al Kiida belief
> > > that the dude upstairs will reward them with wine, women, and song for
> > > twisted martyrdom is an abstract idea; but the result was planes
> > > smashing into NY buildings.
> That's Al Qaida moron. I do not believe bringing god into this will
> help you a bit. You were a moron with or without God.

Natural-selection spelling: letter mutations are created upon which society selects the best fit over time. Embrace evolution.

>
> > On the contrary, these people have quite concrete ideas, about good, evil,
> > means and ends. It is for you God is an abstract idea, for them he and his
> > will is *data*, recorded facts...
> Oh poor baby..Keep whining in order to establish sympathy because your
> sloppy concepts were triply shot down by people who do not believe in
> science fiction.
>
> > > which subroutines and stored procedures can perform well.
> >
> > You should propose a relational and declarative solution, which
> > *subroutines* are clearly not. These are implementations of behavior
> > decomposed into subprograms. Your claim is that there is no need in such
> > thing.
> The most basic declarative solution such as setting up a constraint
> involves more abstract thinking (intersect beween a relation and an un-
> ary domain attribute) than the most sophisticated procedural
> subroutine could ever provide.
>
> Only ignorance and stupidity can hide that fact from your puny mind
> who tries to lock us up into low level procedural approaches.

That reply was not to me, but I'll chime in anyhow. Declarative "programming" using sets etc. indeed can be tricky at times. Procedural is more natural to most people because it mirrors the step- -step process descriptions we grow up with. Plus, its often easier to "intercept" the intermediate steps for debugging.

This gets to the issue of whether we should try to bend our mind to fit our software or vise versa. There may indeed be a declarative genius or two who can write a general ledger system with just a 10- line relational formula. However, it is unrealistic to expect this of everybody. The goal is not job security for the select few Einsteins who can pull that off.

>
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Dmitry A. Kazakovhttp://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

-T- Received on Tue Mar 18 2008 - 01:14:21 CET