Thread from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15949144
2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981045
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8133835
What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)
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Re: What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)
#12When I started web work ~9 years ago, it was with Rails and ActiveRecord, which turns out to be incredibly good for basic queries and pretty basic apps. So good to the point where I never bothered to go too far into SQL until years later, which was a mistake. When doing work in python, I don't feel it has a comparable ORM, to where I kind of write my own files that have things like finders and updaters and creators.…
Current rails developer here, I've found that using ActiveRecord for basic queries and moving to SQL for more complex stuff to be a very good combination.
I agree that ORM users should learn SQL, but SQL and an ORM are not mutually exclusive.
Re: What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)
#13> I do know one thing: I won’t fall into the “ORMs make it easy” trap. They are an acceptable way to represent a data definition, but a poor way to write queries and a bad way to store object state. If you’re using an RDBMS, bite the bullet and learn SQL.
I don't think i'm alone in saying I'd rather hire a developer who is native with an ORM and can dive into SQL when things get thorny, than hire one who's going to fight me on the very merits of an ORM at all.
I mean, hey. To each his own. But lets be clear: this is ridiculous, and if you think it's a position you want to take up, make sure you can get hired holding onto it.
Re: What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)
#14ORMs lure you in with a false sense of neat abstraction. They have nice intuitive examples on their home pages. But then you use them in the real world, doing gnarly queries, and you realize that doing anything powerful and fast in the ORM requires its own completely separate abstractions, which are often difficult for the uninitiated to follow. It's also often a big pain to debug the raw SQL that gets compiled after the ORM does its magic.
The argument I've made before when going down the path of ORMs has been: do we forsee needing to use this model code on a different database engine? Outside of simple toy applications, or needing to support different engines with the same code, I agree that ORMs are more trouble than they're worth.
Re: What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)
#15For anything complex, definitely. For anything simple, eh.
It also feels to me like he's talking about a specific ORM - I know ActiveRecord has it's fair share of issues, but from what I know of AR usage and implementation, it either doesn't do what he's (legitimately!) complaining about or does do it in the way he's suggesting.
Re: What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)
#16We used a third party tool for mailers and it was having severe performance problems after moving the server to a cloud based solution.
We confirmed what the DBAs said, the latency was only 34 seconds round trip and the database was pretty fast. I installed wireshark to see what was going on. It was querying a table with 80,000 entries, and then for each entry it would do another, "select ... limit 1" query to get the meta data on each record. This loop was abstracted away in an ORM and the third party had very few clients with tables of our size for that particular table.
When it was run on prem it wouldn't take too long, but when it was on cloud it would take 45 minutes. Insignificant amounts of time being spent thousands of times ends up being significant time spent, and this can creep up on you as more things move to be serverless / API driven. A bunch of money and time was spent on figuring out the source of the issue.
Re: What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)
#17[deleted]
Re: What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)
#18Wholeheartedly agree. It's amazing how much work you can save by just having the database do it via a SQL query/view.
We used to show the new developers on the team a query generated by Entity Framework...23 pages long. We replaced it with a well formatted query that fit on half a page. When I switched the team to Java + JPA, we started writing our own queries if wasn't a simple CRUD and it has been wonderful for the entire team. I think it's easier to learn SQL than learn an abstraction of a DSL.
And SQL has been relevant for about half a century, odds are good you'll continue to find use for that knowledge for the remainder of your career.. Well worth the time investment.
Re: What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)
#19These things don't have to be mutually exclusive. Know your tools and when to use them.
Re: What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)
#20When I started web work ~9 years ago, it was with Rails and ActiveRecord, which turns out to be incredibly good for basic queries and pretty basic apps. So good to the point where I never bothered to go too far into SQL until years later, which was a mistake. When doing work in python, I don't feel it has a comparable ORM, to where I kind of write my own files that have things like finders and updaters and creators.…
current rails dev here, i've found ripping out the custom SQL and replacing it with ORM equivalents offers the best performance and readability short of custom Postgres functions. The state of ORM in rails of 2014 vs 2019 is a big leap.