Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Again, performance is not my point. If you want maximum performance, use a low-level key-value store, hence my VSAM analogy. On the contrary, for me it is about simplicity.

SQL is the most high level language in common use. It abstracts away everything: Storage, memory, concurrency, and, most importantly, control flow. Complexity comes from complecting things, simplicity comes from decomplecting [1] things. SQL decomplects the what (data flow) from the how (control flow) which means less cognitive load, higher developer productivity and better maintainability.

In my experience, writing business logic in SQL results in fewer bugs and less code. I have replaced 50-line Java methods with 15-line SQL projections multiple times. With Python, the ratio is closer to 2:1, but it's still impressive.

And all of this without having to consider type impedance, eager versus lazy loading, result set mappings, second-level caching, dirty tracking, lifecycle management, OCC, or obscure savepoint bugs. Performance is just a nice, but welcome side effect.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxdOUGdseq4



The results would be opposite for me.

I need dynamic query building in most places.

Doing those inline in SQL would result in a mess of unmaintainable manual string concatenation and parameter interpolation.

A code uglier does not exist.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: