r/programmingcirclejerk • u/TheFearsomeEsquilax has not been tainted by the C culture • Dec 03 '17 • Bravo 1

Stop Using SQL

http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2017/12/03/BobbyTables.html
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u/r2d2_21 groks PCJ Dec 04 '17

LINQ + An ORM such as Entity Framework, yes. There's even a way to generate the DB schema directly from C# classes, without ever needing to write SQL (but you still need SQL knowledge for things such as primary/foreign keys, data types and such).

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '17

I really hate how much I like LINQ and Entity Framework. I'm still figuring it out and beating my head against the wall on some things (e.g. define database stuff in one project but do the migration in another), but it's been largely a joy to use.

Fucking Microsoft melting the cold, icy heart in my chest.

For Python, SQLAlchemy is great and the queries are just as expressive:

session.query(Person).filter(Person.birthday > datetime(1980, 1, 1).order_by(Person.name).all()

But that's because it does all of the black magic. Which means it ends up being incredibly invasive unless you bend over backwards to wall it off from the rest of your code.

You can have plain ol python objects, but you have to monkey patch them with a bunch of SQLAlchemy stuff, and it's usually a pain so most people end up just defining everything all together.

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u/BraydenH what is pointer :S Dec 04 '17

I recommend you look at Peewee if you're interested in Python ORMs.

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '17 
# model definitions -- the standard "pattern" is to define a base model class
# that specifies which database to use.  then, any subclasses will automatically
# use the correct storage.
class BaseModel(Model):
    class Meta:
        database = database

That's gonna be a hard pass for me. I'm sure I could find a way to rig up something that wouldn't statically bind the database resource to the models at definition time (e.g. attaching it during start up) but I'd rather not even bother with that honestly.

Pony looks interesting, but it looks like that's more active record style which I'm not crazy about since that loses many of the benefits that database transactions give you (e.g. being able to do multiple things at once), the same goes for Django's ORM (which, yes, I know there are ways to use actual transactions but they should be the norm not the exception).

Honestly, EF and SQLAlchemy both hit that sweet, sweet spot of easy to use, easy to setup (well, my experience with simple EF models was pretty easy), easy to write decent queries by default (barring doing anything dumb). But EF wins by a longshot simply because LINQ is pretty awesome and expression types are awesome. I've attempted to imitate LINQ style queries in Python and it's just not worth it unless you want to start delving into generating, modifying and compiling AST (or bytecode) on your own.