He keeps going on about SQL not requiring it, but SQL requires it in every statement (the select clause).
I'd hate to be the one who has to maintain an admin app that could potentially access 230 tables with dynamic column references scattered all throughout the code and no types to keep things in order.
haha a string of SQL is not the same thing as a type constrained data structure.
> I'd hate to be the one who has to maintain an admin app that could potentially access 230 tables with dynamic column references scattered all throughout the code and no types to keep things in order.
Thankfully, the client used a database that is capable of enforcing type constraints automatically, so I didn't have to spend time writing business logic to reiterate what the database already knows and strictly enforces, in a language that can't even enforce type constraints anyway. Re-declaring your column names and types in javascript literally does nothing except waste time. You shouldn't be reading through your application code to understand the schema of your database, especially when you're dealing with hundreds of tables.
This depends on the complexity of your schema. In my case, I was dealing with a 230 table legacy application where some of the tables had as many as 70 columns. I was tasked with building an ad-hoc administrative tool for the owners so that they could perform a few specific tasks and periodically review some information in the system.
I wanted to use an ORM because I didn't want to write a bunch of boilerplate SQL to rig up a tedious but relatively simple internal CRUD app. With that in mind, it certainly didn't make sense to enumerate the details of every column when the alternative (raw SQL) also wouldn't require me to do that. Enumerating explicit column information was unnecessary and certainly would have taken me a lot of time.