Comments for The Inquisitive Coder - Davy Brion's Blog

Comment on Must Everything Be Virtual With NHibernate? by Are there occasions when NHibernate won't return a proxy object? | PHP Developer Resource

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:49:30 +0000

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Comment on Why Do We Recycle Our Application Pools? by Rhino_5672

Rhino_5672 — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:22:00 +0000

Its as if you just found out about Microsoft. There are a lot of things wrong with their server platforms, including SharePoint, that we all wish they have a fix for. Just because they don’t have a tool to fix their product doesn’t mean its not there.

Recycle every 29 hours seem reasonable.

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by EdCh

EdCh — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:40:00 +0000

Say it ain’t so. I’ve enjoyed reading your blog. I think you have something to say and am sadden you elected to shut down your blog. I wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by Nikola Radosavljević

Nikola Radosavljević — Sun, 20 May 2012 21:55:00 +0000

Sorry to hear that Davy. Just as I’ve discovered your blog and just as seeing new post from you in Google Reader started to put a smile on my face you announce you’re quitting. I’m going to miss reading your thoughts. There’s not that many places where one can read about deeper aspects of technology, rather than starting flame wars about favorite frameworks.

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by Davy Brion

Davy Brion — Sat, 19 May 2012 08:04:00 +0000

that was the title i first wanted to use for this post

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by Prabu Gunaraj

Prabu Gunaraj — Sat, 19 May 2012 02:37:00 +0000

I have enjoyed reading your posts, will miss your thoughts!

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by efdee

efdee — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:27:00 +0000

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Comment on Why On Earth Would A Developer Do This? by Uncle Bob Martin

Uncle Bob Martin — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:43:00 +0000

Davy: Certainly there should be an API for caching. However, I don’t want the business rules knowing about that. The business rules should be independent of those kinds of concerns. If the business rules are coupled to all the physical constraints of the system, then they will be very complex, and fragile. Whenever one of those constraints changes, the business rules will have to be changed too.

Comment on Why On Earth Would A Developer Do This? by Davy Brion

Davy Brion — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:44:00 +0000

regardless of the data store being used, wouldn’t it make much more sense to make things like potential caching of data and/or paging through the results explicit in the API? Wouldn’t that make the code less ambiguous? Isn’t that an important part of writing clean code?

Comment on Why On Earth Would A Developer Do This? by Uncle Bob Martin

Uncle Bob Martin — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:37:00 +0000

Davy, notice how your discussion implies something. It implies that the design of a system should be wrapped around the database. You are worried about ‘select’ statement in the middle of a business rule! In other words, you believe that this business rule is _coupled_ to the database in an intimate way. You know that hammering a database with individual select statements is slow, and so you conclude that the above is terrible code.

I can see why you might have thought this to be true, since the code _does_ have a PayrollDatabase object; and one simplistic implementation of that object might be to bind it directly to a SQL database. Indeed, early in the development of the application, such an implementation would likely be the norm. On the other hand, what if I were using an in-memory database? What if, prior to executing this code, I simply cached all the employees in memory? What if I were using CouchDB, or Mongo, or BigTable? Or what if the PayrollDatabase object was clever enough to fetch and cache 50, or 100, or 1000 employees every time it got a cache miss? Would you have the same complaint?

The point is that there are many interesting ways to avoid coupling your business rule code to the hard details of a relational database. And there are many reasons why this is a good idea.

Databases are details; they are not the core of your system. A good system architect pushes the database out to the edges of the system and breaks all couplings of the use cases and business rules upon it. This allows the system to use any kind of data storage mechanism it might need, now, or in the future.

Davy, you are absolutely right. If I knew that I was using a SQL database, and would always be using a SQL database, then I would change that algorithm to take advantage of that knowledge. But I don’t know that I’m using a SQL database. I don’t know it because I don’t _want_ to know it. I want that information hidden, because I don’t want to depend upon it. That means that I am free to write the business rule code in the manner that seems most expressive and clear to me; and to move the problem to the code that connects the business rules to the database.
For more on this, see the cleancoders.com videos on Architecture, Form, Functions, The Single Responsibility Principle, and The Open Closed Principle.

Comment on Easing The Pain Of WCF Debugging by Raki311290

Raki311290 — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:04:00 +0000

Excellent article. “WCFTrace.Log” was really helpful. Thank you Brion…:)

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by Vasili Puchko

Vasili Puchko — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:33:00 +0000

Oh, you are a little bit late for 1st April fool joke Sad-sad-sad

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by Michel Grootjans

Michel Grootjans — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:50:00 +0000

Too bad… I enjoyed the regular posts. Respect for being able to cut it off cleanly.

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by Davy Brion

Davy Brion — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:45:00 +0000

I’ve never been a fan of those blogs where there are gaps of multiple months between posts, so I didn’t want it to get like that over here.

The most important content will remain online though… I’ve put a lot of effort into this blog and it represents a body of work that I’m not just going to throw out. Existing links to the important posts will keep working, but the site itself is just gonna be something really simple that I’m gonna put together sometime in the upcoming months.

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by Bram De Moor

Bram De Moor — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:21:00 +0000

Damn This is by far one of my favorite blogs, usually the first one I read when I check my rss reader. This is also one of the few blogs that I sometimes comment on, and it even inspired me to start my own blog. But I understand how much time and effort it often takes to continuously write good posts. If it feels like a chore, it’s not worth your time anymore.

Through the years, I found that, next to the solid technical content, the critical opinions and rants were what really made this blog stand out. You formulated some strong opinions which many other bloggers wouldn’t dare to voice. That’s an achievement in its own right

Finally, wouldn’t it be okay to just blog more passively? Just leave the content online and do a post every once in a while, when you feel like it. If I remember correctly, either Atwood or Spolsky started to do exactly the same thing a while ago. Anyway, I’m certain that in a couple of months, some of your opinions would have to find a way out. And you can’t fit everything into 140 characters…

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by AbelebA

AbelebA — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:11:00 +0000

Thanks for your time and guidance. Best of luck in whatever you decide to pursue in this life…

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by Ghealy

Ghealy — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:29:00 +0000

I’ll be sorry to see you go. Really enjoyed your blog over the past while, and I learned a lot from it too. All the best for the future.

Comment on Using The Guid.Comb Identifier Strategy by Wireless Microphones

Wireless Microphones — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:33:00 +0000

click to read…

[...]the time to read or visit the content or sites we have linked to below the[...]…

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by Davy Brion

Davy Brion — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:27:00 +0000

I wouldn’t hold my breath

Comment on And… That’s All Folks by Jef Claes

Jef Claes — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:50:00 +0000

In all seriousness though, you’ve put out some great content over the years. You have inspired me to step up my own writing and challenged my views on serveral aspects of software development. Feel free to make up your mind any time