Joel Spolsky on languages for web programming

Ruby
121

On 9/9/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky [email protected] wrote:

  1. I don’t consider a 4X speed improvement on a matrix multiply and
    inverse, which is what I got with YARV over Ruby 1.8.5, “premature
    optimization”.

  2. If the bottleneck is the database, why does Rails frown on stored
    procedures, preferring instead to do everything in the ActiveRecord ORM?

It’s an Opinion. A potentially valid one, but just an Opinion.

Frankly, DHH has made a number of mistakes in his Opinions on what a
database should do. Some of these are worse than others – encoding
MySQL semantics into AR behaviour (when MySQL is not doing the right
thing by any measure) is a good one. But there’s nothing inherently
wrong with stored procedures or triggers. There’s good reasons for
having them and using them; there’s good reasons for not using them
even if they are available (they weren’t available for MySQL for a
long time, IIRC).

Certain things – like audit logging – I only want done with
database triggers.

-austin

122

On 9/11/06, Austin Z. [email protected] wrote:

It’s an Opinion. A potentially valid one, but just an Opinion.

Frankly, DHH has made a number of mistakes in his Opinions on what a
database should do. Some of these are worse than others – encoding
MySQL semantics into AR behaviour (when MySQL is not doing the right
thing by any measure) is a good one.
[snip]

Austin Z. * [email protected] * http://www.halostatue.ca/

Hi Austin

Could you elaborate on this? I’m curious as to what you mean by
“mysql semantics into AR behaviour”. Do you mean the preference to
treat a database as a glorified hash, and not enforcing any
constraints at the db level?

thanks,
Rob

123

On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 09:08:44PM +0900, Austin Z. wrote:

That’s one. An aversion to foreign keys (which, contrary to DHH’s
assertion, can encode the relationships captured by most of the
(Worse, MySQL behaviour is not consistent on this matter; on Windows,
MySQL itself is case-insensitive but AR is still case-sensitive. MySQL
is one of the worst damned implementations of SQL ever. Still.)

That’s with respect to table names rather than column names, and really
only
effects MyISAM tables. InnoDB tables don’t have that problem, if I
remember
correctly. BDB and others I’m not so sure about because I haven’t had
need to
use them myself.

124

On 9/12/06, Keith G. [email protected] wrote:

On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 09:08:44PM +0900, Austin Z. wrote:

That’s one. An aversion to foreign keys (which, contrary to DHH’s
assertion, can encode the relationships captured by most of the
(Worse, MySQL behaviour is not consistent on this matter; on Windows,
MySQL itself is case-insensitive but AR is still case-sensitive. MySQL
is one of the worst damned implementations of SQL ever. Still.)
That’s with respect to table names rather than column names, and really only
effects MyISAM tables. InnoDB tables don’t have that problem, if I remember
correctly. BDB and others I’m not so sure about because I haven’t had need to
use them myself.

IME, it is something with MyISAM (which is still the most common
configuration because it offers pure speed) and it does affect
column names as well even though it shouldn’t for the stupid reasons
that tables are affected.

MySQL is a big sticking pile that should be left in the scrapheap.

-austin

125

On 9/12/06, Rob S. [email protected] wrote:

constraints at the db level?
That’s one. An aversion to foreign keys (which, contrary to DHH’s
assertion, can encode the relationships captured by most of the
belongs_to_* sort of helpers in AR) is another. The one that’s always
annoyed me most is the fact that MySQL behaves incorrectly with
respect to table and column-name case-sensitivity.

That is, these two are supposed to be identical:

SELECT ID FROM PRODUCT;
SELECT id FROM product;
SELECT Id FROM Product;

You’re only supposed to be case sensitive if you enclose your named
object in double quotes:

SELECT “Id” FROM “Product”;

Oracle, for example, when you query the data dictionary, returns
columns in all caps. This means that the folks who wrote the Oracle
adapter for AR have to go to the extra effort of downcasing everything
… unless it’s mixed caps. This is one point where (IMO) the SQL
standard made big mistakes (allowing any case-sensitive object names
at all, no matter the reason), but AR encodes MySQL behaviour as if it
were correct.

(Worse, MySQL behaviour is not consistent on this matter; on Windows,
MySQL itself is case-insensitive but AR is still case-sensitive. MySQL
is one of the worst damned implementations of SQL ever. Still.)

-austin

126

At 1:57 AM +0900 9/13/06, Austin Z. wrote:

MySQL is a big sticking pile that should be left in the scrapheap.

No, really, tell us how you REALLY feel about it. (:-).

FWIW, a friend of mine is a seasoned DB programmer who migrated
from Oracle to PostgreSQL a few years ago. He says similar things
about MySQL. Worse, however, he says that RoR is destined to be
saddled with MySQL workarounds far into the future. Consequently,
he dismisses Rails as a whole, which is a shame.

Given that RoR is extremely modular, I see no real reason why this
must be the case. If some folks that are sharp in both PostgreSQL
and Ruby (note: I am not one :slight_smile: were willing to make the effort,
AR could be enhanced (or replaced, if need be) to provide clean DB
semantics.

Until that time, the AR/MySQL hegemony will continue to dominate
RoR practice. As they say, an ounce of implementation trumps a
pound of rhetoric…

-r

http://www.cfcl.com/rdm Rich M.
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume [email protected]
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog +1 650-873-7841

Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development

127

Rich M. wrote:

he dismisses Rails as a whole, which is a shame.

-r
cant u run RoR with postgre sql adapter already? thought you could…

disadvantages?

regards
Jonas

128

On 9/12/06, Jonas H. [email protected] wrote:

cant u run RoR with postgre sql adapter already? thought you could…

disadvantages?

Sure you can. You can even run it with an Oracle adapter. But there
are design decisions made by the core Rails team based on the way that
MySQL does things – and the way that MySQL does things is flat out
wrong. This isn’t a matter of one technical opinion vs. another.
This is a matter of incorrect implementation and basing one’s
preferred behaviour on that incorrect implementation.

IMO, DHH has an (illogical) opposition to foreign key handling in
Rails because MySQL can’t do squat with it. (SQLite is no better on
that front, not even recording them as notes, but at least SQLite has
the excuse that it isn’t trying to be a full SQL implementation. MySQL
has pretended to be that for years and has implemented a tiny fraction
of the standard to date.)

SQL databases suck, but MySQL implements SQL so badly that it
shouldn’t even be called an SQL database.

Basically, you can use any database you want behind ActiveRecord, but
ActiveRecord itself is going to treat it as if it were MySQL. You’ll
get none of the advanced features from your real database.

And that’s a shame, because – as I said – ActiveRecord does so
much right and could do it even cleaner if it used the facilities in
the database. (For example, there’s no built in way to create a
foreign key in migrations. This is inexcusable despite DHH’s
opposition, because good database design demands foreign keys. Not
using them is a half-assed mockery of database design. On those
platforms which don’t support foreign keys, like MySQL and SQLite,
make foreign key operations null.)

I’ll use Rails, to be sure. I just used it this past weekend – and I
used it on MySQL (long story again with no excusable reasons why I
couldn’t have used something more intelligent). But MySQL is an
absolute dog that shouldn’t be used if you want any kind of data
integrity.

-austin

129

On 9/10/06, Chad P. [email protected] wrote:

On Mon, Sep 11, 2006 at 07:52:10AM +0900, David V. wrote:

kate rhodes wrote:

.NET and the JVM and Parrot are just virtual machines that by themself
contribute absolutely nothing to the productivity of a web developer.

.NET is the whole platform, the CLR is the VM.

You beat me to it – just as Rails implies the Ruby interpreter, so .NET
implies the CLR.

You guys are right but the point still stands. The entire .net
platform is still not something that can, in any reasonable way, be
compared to Rails. They’re completely different things with completely
different purposes in life.

You can’t write a web app in .net. It’s not a language and it’s not a
web framework. You could write an app in Django / TurboGears that
ran under /within .net and THAT would be comparable but not because
it’s got anything to do with .net. It would be comparable because
Django and TurboGears are both web frameworks like Rails.

130

On Sep 12, 2006, at 9:57 AM, Austin Z. wrote:

MySQL is a big sticking pile that should be left in the scrapheap.

Well, it’s good enough to run major pieces of big public-facing web
sites, starting with Yahoo!, so it deserves a little respect I’d say -
Tim

131

Austin Z. wrote:

preferred behaviour on that incorrect implementation.

…

SQL databases suck, but MySQL implements SQL so badly that it
shouldn’t even be called an SQL database.

I think we’re running into a terminology issue here. If we think
of MySQL as a data persistence and retrieval mechanism, it has
certain properties and is optimized for certain types of
applications.

The fact that it’s so widely used, and so effectively used by so
many people, argues that the design decisions embodied in MySQl
weren’t completely wrong.

The fact that it’s an incomplete realization of Codd’s vision, and
has some interesting flaws from a data integrity perspective, means
that it isn’t good for other applications.

Generic statements like “MySQL is a big sticking pile that should be
left
in the scrapheap” aren’t really useful at all.

William G.

132

On Wed, Sep 13, 2006 at 04:03:46AM +0900, Tim B. wrote:

On Sep 12, 2006, at 9:57 AM, Austin Z. wrote:

MySQL is a big sticking pile that should be left in the scrapheap.

Well, it’s good enough to run major pieces of big public-facing web
sites, starting with Yahoo!, so it deserves a little respect I’d say -

Also including the full lineup of Wikimedia websites (Wikipedia,
Wikinews, Wikicities, et cetera).

133

On 9/12/06, William G. [email protected] wrote:

Austin Z. wrote:

SQL databases suck, but MySQL implements SQL so badly that it
shouldn’t even be called an SQL database.
I think we’re running into a terminology issue here. If we think
of MySQL as a data persistence and retrieval mechanism, it has
certain properties and is optimized for certain types of
applications.

You mean “applications where the integrity of the data is completely
irrelevant.”

The fact that it’s so widely used, and so effectively used by so
many people, argues that the design decisions embodied in MySQl
weren’t completely wrong.

If you’re trying to embody SQL database semantics, then said design
decisions are wrong. If you’re just trying to have something that’s
slightly more structured than flat files, then you’re right – they’re
not wrong. Otherwise, MySQL is crap. Utter and complete crap for which
I have no respect for its developers.

The fact that it’s an incomplete realization of Codd’s vision, and
has some interesting flaws from a data integrity perspective, means
that it isn’t good for other applications.

Stop. Right. There. (1) NO current SQL-based database realizes
Codd’s vision. Some come closer than others, but SQL databases aren’t
properly relational. See the discussions headed by Fabian Pascal and
Chris Date (of dbdebunk) for that. (2) MySQL doesn’t even implement
SQL database semantics properly. They pretend to, but they don’t
actually do it. Because they don’t support it, (3) a lot of developers
have assumed that if MySQL does it, it must be right. It isn’t. It
isn’t even close to right. I would argue that 90%+ of all the open
source database schema produced to work with MySQL take advantage of
MySQLisms and aren’t even first normal form.

There’s a place for big piles of data. But not in a SQL database or
a schema implemented on top of that database. I personally want RoR
databases to be well-designed databases, not the piles of utter crap
that you see from 99% of PHP developers who couldn’t tell data
modelling from a hole in the ground.

Yes, I have very strong opinions about data modelling. No, I don’t
think you can be a good developer if you don’t know data modelling
(more provocative: you can’t make a good object model if you can’t do
proper data modelling). Yes, I think you can create good databases
that will run on MySQL – but you have to do so despite MySQL’s
stupidities.

Generic statements like “MySQL is a big sticking pile that should be left
in the scrapheap” aren’t really useful at all.

When they’re accurate – as “MySQL is a big stinking pile…” is,
they’re quite useful. If you want to work with databases, work with a
real database. Postgres, for example. If you just need something
quick, use SQLite. Both will protect your data better than MySQL.

It’s unfortunate that MySQL has become the “preferred” database for
web work, because it’s complete crap.

-austin

134

On Wed, Sep 13, 2006 at 01:57:02AM +0900, Austin Z. wrote:

that tables are affected.
Yup, that’s what I said. I can’t say I’ve had the same experience as you
with column names. Then again, I don’t use MyISAM anymore, except when I
need fulltext search, don’t need transactions and need COUNT(*) to work
quickly, or as a read cache. In practice, I find–and, of course, this
is
anecdotal–that InnoDB’s ability to do row-level locking more than
compensates
for the performance difference between the two.

MySQL is a big sticking pile that should be left in the scrapheap.

If it works fine for a project, it’s fine. Personally, I’d prefer to use
something like PostgreSQL, Firebird, or SQL Server, but sometimes MySQL
is
just fine.

K.

135

kate rhodes wrote:

You can’t write a web app in .net.

Yes, you can. ASP.NET and the System.Web namespace are a web framework,
somewhat similar to Java’s JSF. The approach is to make the controller
look more like you’d use when making a desktop app - it’s event-driven,
as opposed to request-driven. .NET doesn’t include ORM, that’s actually
a trait that’s not really common to web frameworks - Rails is the only
one I’ve had experience with that does do that. All those are part of
what you call .NET (although you need a .NET-capable webserver.

Your point does not stand, your previous posts didn’t include a single
argument why it should.

David V.

136

David V. wrote:

kate rhodes wrote:

You can’t write a web app in .net.

Yes, you can. ASP.NET and the System.Web namespace are a web framework,
somewhat similar to Java’s JSF.

You snipped the context. I suspect it said Ruby is a platform like .NET,
so
Rails is a framework like ASP.NET.

Your point does not stand, your previous posts didn’t include a single
argument why it should.

“I distort your argument, therefor it’s wrong” is not a valid debate
technique.

137

Phlip wrote:

You snipped the context. I suspect it said Ruby is a platform like .NET, so
Rails is a framework like ASP.NET.

Quoting Kate Rhodes:

You can’t compare .net and Rails. It’s like comparing the JVM or
Parrot and Rails. It makes no sense.

.NET and the JVM and Parrot are just virtual machines that by
themself
contribute absolutely nothing to the productivity of a web developer.

After being corrected on the above, the next argument was just that you
can’t write a web application in .NET.

The mention of how (only) a Django / TurboGears app on IronPython would
be a webapp running on .NET, and even then wouldn’t be a .NET webapp
made me presume the claim was that .NET flat out lacks the features to
write a webapp, as did the claims that .NET by itself won’t increase
your productivity.

My personal guess is that Kate is ignorant of ASP.NET generally, of how
it would relate to Rails in purpose more so.

“I distort your argument, therefor it’s wrong” is not a valid debate
technique.

Except I didn’t distort it since there was no relevant argument stated.
Feel free to use the list archive to see for yourself.

David V.

138

Jonas H. wrote:

cant u run RoR with postgre sql adapter already? thought you could…

disadvantages?

And this holiday season, the Grammar Nazi association gives you a
special Christmas present: a basket full of apostrophes, full words, and
complete sentences. Enjoy.

David V.

PS: Please try to keep the standards of communication at a reasonable
level. English correct to the best of your abilities will do. Kthxbai.

139

On 9/12/06, William G. [email protected] wrote:

irrelevant."
No, I meant exactly what I said.

Thanks for putting words in my mouth though.

MySQL is optimized for one thing: applications that don’t give a damn
about data integrity. Like most PHP applications.

If you want something that actually protects your data, use something
else. Hell, SQLite is better than MySQL for that.

So, you may have meant what you said, but what you said was so
nonsensical that I was forced to make it clear what you actually
meant.

-austin

140

Austin Z. wrote:

irrelevant."

No, I meant exactly what I said.

Thanks for putting words in my mouth though.

William G.