Re:Things I wished more developers knew about databases
by fools on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @04:30PM
(#22949838)
If I write a C program, especially with the appropriate compiler warnings enabled, or some filesystem code, there is a high chance that it will work across platforms with no further coding necessary. Anecdotally, the same cannot be said for CSS or SQL.
It doesn't matter much for SQL, because I always know what database I'm using, but for CSS, it's a massive pain.
Re:Things I wished more developers knew about databases
by acdha on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @04:47PM
(#22950016)
That's a charming belief about C which is only true if you work on the same operating system, processor, and don't do anything complicated. If those are not true, as I've experienced many times over the years, you will learn otherwise about things like differences in floating point behaviour, memory allocation and access patterns, which filesystem and/or locking semantics, etc.
In other words, it's about as true as it is for CSS and SQL, where that kind of simple use is also stable.
Re:Things I wished more developers knew about databases
by fools on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @04:49PM
(#22950034)
Yes, I write fairly boring applications. But the point is that C is mostly cross-platform for those boring applications, whereas the the "cross-platformness" of CSS and SQL fall apart for even the simplest of tasks.
Re:Things I wished more developers knew about databases
by acdha on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @04:52PM
(#22950072)
Again, I think you're viewing this through the lens of relative experience. I have seen tons of C code which required substantial fixes to work portably (bonus points when this was exploitable) and I have plenty of CSS and SQL which hasn't had to be touched in years.
My reaction to that is that it's similar in a different way: everyone needs to use it but many developers don't take it seriously, avoid learning how it works, and then complain that it's unintuitive (i.e. not something they had already known) and hard to use because they're basically just poking randomly until they get close enough to what they want.
It's true that not every implementation is the same but … where else is that not true? This is also true of operating systems, filesystems, every library implementing a standard format (“Why doesn't this PDF open in …”), etc. I would have trouble supporting the belief that databases are an outlier in this regard.