Really dislike these "considered harmful" type titles.
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PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful
#12Really dislike these "considered harmful" type titles.
You may enjoy this classic then:
“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful https://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html
Re: PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're hyperbolic and don't actually give you any useful information on why they're "harmful" or what's wrong with the subject being discussed.
That they are hyperbolic, maybe. I disagree with the rest, I believe there are tons of information on both examples about why they are harmful. (edit, typo)
Not in the titles. "X is harmful" could instead be "X is unsafe", "X is often slow", "X has non-obvious corner cases", "X led us to maintenance hell", ...
"Harmful" is less information and kind of suggests an overall judgement for all cases vs "things to consider" (which was e.g. also a criticism of the original letter, that it lead to rules like "never use goto" which forced people to do bad workarounds instead of discussion on where to use it and where not)
Re: PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
That they are hyperbolic, maybe. I disagree with the rest, I believe there are tons of information on both examples about why they are harmful. (edit, typo)
Not in the titles . "X is harmful" could instead be "X is unsafe", "X is often slow", "X has non-obvious corner cases", "X led us to maintenance hell", ... "Harmful" is less information and kind of suggests an overall judgement for all cases vs "things to consider" (which was e.g. also a criticism of the original letter, that it lead to rules like "never use goto" which forced people to do bad workarounds instead of…
The problem with titles like that is that they don't convey the same thing. "considered harmful" has entered the lexicon at this point, so you know what you're going to get when you see it, which is someone attempting to make a reasoned case about why some behavior that people do and consider okay is actually worse than people may suspect.
In that way, it's much more informative and less likely to have people arguing pedantic points about the title being "correct" than "is harmful" or "is often slow" or "has non-obvious corner cases" or "can create maintenance problems", which might all be items together in a "is considered harmful" article.
In other words, it's come full circle. There was the first, then there was the numerous copycats, then the backlash, and now we're all the way around to the point there it's a fairly succinct way to describe exactly the type of article people use it on and most people know what it means and what to expect when they see it.
All that's left is for people to realize it's not going anywhere and actually has some beneficial use and that there's no point in complaining about it anymore, but that might be asking too much.
Re: PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
That they are hyperbolic, maybe. I disagree with the rest, I believe there are tons of information on both examples about why they are harmful. (edit, typo)
Not in the titles . "X is harmful" could instead be "X is unsafe", "X is often slow", "X has non-obvious corner cases", "X led us to maintenance hell", ... "Harmful" is less information and kind of suggests an overall judgement for all cases vs "things to consider" (which was e.g. also a criticism of the original letter, that it lead to rules like "never use goto" which forced people to do bad workarounds instead of…
Fair enough. Yet it might be difficult to summarize the tradeoffs succinctly enough for a title.
"Harmful" conveys enough information to raise awareness of a topic which might not be usually considered. Both examples show this pattern: schema-less is often considered a good thing, when it is not (in Stonebraker's and my opinion); also subtransactions are usually considered a good thing, while the OP shows they can have notable negative effects (of diverse nature) in the database.
Re: PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful
#16Really dislike these "considered harmful" type titles.
I'm the co-author of one of such ones: "Schema Later Considered Harmful" [1]. I don't see what's wrong with this "type titles", may you elaborate? :) [1] https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/schema-later-considered-ha...
In my opinion:
It’s smug.
You’re publishing an opinion with a title that suggests an authority has formed a consensus.
Re: PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm the co-author of one of such ones: "Schema Later Considered Harmful" [1]. I don't see what's wrong with this "type titles", may you elaborate? :) [1] https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/schema-later-considered-ha...
I've seen plenty over the years as a professional developer of 20+ years and they are opinion pieces for the most part. I'd rather see a title along the lines of "Why you should avoid subtransactions". Drinking bleach is harmful.
The original was Dijkstra's "Go To Statement Considered Harmful". Many considered that title unnecessarily provocative, but it ended up creating a new CS/programming meme.
Now, I see "Considered Harmful" as just a concise way of alluding to that style of article, basically saying "here are the not-well-known downsides of a commonly-used thing". Many "Considered Harmful" articles do not live up to that promise, but I think this one does.
Another title meme: "Zen and the Art of ...".
Re: PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful
#18cockroachdb implements subtransactions and I don't think any of these issues apply to cockroach's implementation.
Re: PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful
#19I was confused enough by the word subtransactions to ask DDG for help. This discussion is #1 and #3 is https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14445799.pdf which is a more direct overview of where subtransactions are at. The paper's title Transactions Design For Databases With High Performance and Availability isn't desperately helpful, but the tabular isolation, concurrency and atomicity survey is.
EDIT :
the very first reference in the above paper A Critique of ANSI isolation levels, which is from 1995 and I have only just started with but looks like important reading, is here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
Re: PostgreSQL Subtransactions Considered Harmful
#20Really dislike these "considered harmful" type titles.
I'm the co-author of one of such ones: "Schema Later Considered Harmful" [1]. I don't see what's wrong with this "type titles", may you elaborate? :) [1] https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/schema-later-considered-ha...
It reads to me the same as "is deprecated" or neovim's claim of "literally the future of vim": it makes bold claims about consensus with no support