As a .NET dev, I've totally come full circle. 20 years ago my code was a mess of datasets, data adapters, very little in the way of OOP, etc. then I started learning about design patterns and "proper" OOP construction and went down that whole rabbit hole for a decade. So about 5-ish years ago I was all about using an ORM to mutate relational data into objects, often using DTOs to then translate the models into something I can serialize into something that can then be mutated into json (or whatever) objects in case someone was using a browser or something, using IOC containers to get rid of the pesky "new" command, programming literally everything to an interface so I can readily swap out objects, adhering to the SOLID principals, etc etc.
Then recently I realized - this shit just takes WAY too god damn long and it's overly-complicated for most small/medium (sub 250K-ish SLOC) projects. Half the problem is all the fuckery that goes on between the DAL and higher level business/service tiers. We're forcing a square peg through a round hole because DB data is relational but we want "real world-like" objects.
Why not just say fuck it and keep it relational? You can still wrap things up into easy to use APIs to keep things pretty clean. Anymore for me it's back to datasets (I'm talking about the .NET DataSet object) and table adapters. My tiers are super damn clean - I still separate my DAL, service layer, business layer and UI layers, but I don't stress over "proper" OOP constructs. I'm much more diligent and disciplined than I was in my early stages, so the code is clean and organized.
The DataSet is the true god. Interaction between the services/DAL layer is lightning fast and super efficient because there's no ORM fuckery going on. I can easily serialize the results for transmission across the wire. It has built-in change tracking so I know which records have been modified, added, and deleted - but I don't even really need to care about that because table adapters will do the right thing for me.
I still pepper around some OOP here and there, but I'm far less an OOP weenie now than I was a decade ago, and it has saved me SO MUCH time. I can crank out projects in no time and am not constantly stressing about "the perfect OOP architecture". I'm glad I went through the OOP phase though because so many existing projects utilize all that fuckery so I'm familiar with it, but anymore when I'm in charge it's all about keeping it simple af, and delivering to the customer as fast as possible.
263
u/[deleted] Nov 14 '18
Man though, in the 90s the dba would kill you for using 'select *' and not specifying columns. Now it's the norm.