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0 pointsgregjor13y ago0 comments

Programming is more like fashion than science in this regard. Every decade or so something truly new happens in the software world. All the rest is mostly sound and fury, signifying nothing. If you're young or new to programming it's easy to mistake the buzz around things like NoSQL for innovation when they are usually re-discoveries of old (and often discarded or obsolete) ideas dressed up in new clothes.

There's also the tendency to favor new shiny things and reject old crufty (but proven) things, to want to be part of what seems like the leading edge, to be that guy in the cube farm who is playing with the cool new stuff.

I have been programming longer than RDBMSs have been available, so I know from experience what it's like to manage large databases in application code, and how hard it can be to maintain consistency or do accurate queries and aggregation with half-baked tools. It's frustrating to see a new generation of programmers go through this, but it's human nature to ignore the past.

My fourteen year old son wears his pants pulled down below his waist, Vans shoes, hoodies, lots of hair. He looks pretty much like I did when I was fourteen back in the 1970s. The underlying technologies are the same: pants, shirt, shoes, sweater, hair. The only differences are superficial. To him that style is edgy and contemporary and something his parents don't get. NoSQL is the gangster fashion of programming right now.

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daleharvey13y ago· 2 in thread

I cannot remember a more aggravating discussion on Hacker News.

A lot of people who are working with / building and using 'NoSQL' databases are the very same people building the RDBMS tools that you are so eager to defend.

You have stated elsewhere that you do not know anything about 'NoSQL' stores, so instead of insulting a huge number of people far more experienced than yourself, why dont you attempt to learn? (or at the very least, avoid disregarding the thoughts of a huge sector of the industry)

gregjorOP13y ago

I cannot remember a more aggravating discussion on Hacker News.

I suggest taking exchanges of opinion less personally.

You have stated elsewhere that you do not know anything about 'NoSQL' stores

No, I didn't. I have read about them, gone to conferences, and gone through tutorials for a few NoSQL products, but haven't had a use for them in my own work. Since I have 35+ years of programming and database experience I am not viewing these things through the eyes of a newb. And I have lots of experience with database management pre-RDBMS. I did say I haven't found any use for the current batch of NoSQL tools in my own projects, but obviously lots of other people have. And I have clearly indicated that everything I write is my opinion based on my experience, not word from on high. Again, get a grip.

instead of insulting a huge number of people far more experienced than yourself

No insult intended. My opinions, your mileage may vary. Ad hominem attacks are, on the other hand, deliberate insults.

why dont you attempt to learn? (or at the very least, avoid disregarding the thoughts of a huge sector of the industry)

Thanks for the career advice. My advice to you and some of the other commenters frothing at the mouth is to disconnect your ego from your preferred tools.

einhverfr13y ago

In fact I was watching a presentation somewhere (I forget where), where folks were using NoSQL databases as a sort of pre-processing layer for the RDBMS. In this regard it's very useful on the high-end.

Where I am less convinced is outside the high-end, and outside the idea of a transition tier between input and RDBMS (or between RDBMS and output even). As a persistence layer, NoSQL is applicable largely to the subset of cases where Object Oriented Databases were. Here the GP is right that the industry is keen on relearning the same lessons every couple of decades.... However, as pre-processing and post-processing, there seems to me to be a much larger set of use cases out there but again only where the RDBMS is no longer really able to handle everything you want it to do.

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