MySQL RANT was: PVR or DVR for Linux - NOT MythTV

[Matt Shields]

There was an article in Linux Journal about sometimes a lazy bash
script is good enough to get the job done and doesn't warrant spending
more time developing a more complex script.  I think each application
needs to be evaluated for what is appropriate.  But I think you want
to be careful about using every possible tool under the sun. Deploying
mysql, postgresql, mssql, and oracle would be a maintenance nightmare
when you could have used a single database.  The same goes for using
every possible language under the sun.

-matt

On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:34:54, John Chambers <jc-8FIgwK2HfyJMuWfdjsoA/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Kristian Hermansen commented:
> | I could go on and on about software developers who ignore the nature of
> | databases. It drives me crazy. You wouldn't put up with a developer who
> | didn't understand or know the language they were developing in, why do
> | people put up with ignorance about databases if your application uses
> | them?
> |
> | I can categorically say that *any* software developer that chooses MySQL
> | without a very specific reason should be fired. The "good enough" excuse
> | is laziness.
>
> Hmm  ...   Using  the  same  approach,  I might say that any software
> developer that writes a shell script rather than a  "real"  scripting
> language  like  perl or python is lazy.  But I'd have to admit that I
> write simple shell scripts all the time. Granted, when they get to 10
> or  12  lines,  I usually start thinking "This would be better in p*"
> and add the punctuation chars to  turn  it  into  the  more  powerful
> language.
>
> Larry Wall has pointed out that laziness is one of the attributes  of
> a good programmer, and used this as a primary argument for perl.  Why
> do something the hard way when there's a tool that lets you do it  in
> a simpler way? The fact that a tool isn't general purpose and doesn't
> do a lot of other jobs isn't actually a very good argument if  you're
> trying to get one job done with a minimum of human effort.
>
> I mean, I know C well enough that I haven't consulted a C manual  for
> a couple of decades, but I don't write much my software in C. Most of
> the time,  I  use  more  complex  languages  like  perl,  or  simpler
> languages  like  the Bourne (again;-) shell.  And sometimes I need to
> hit a problem with a  powerful  language  that  makes  low-level  bit
> twiddling easy, so I use C.
>
> This seems to be the heart of the argument for mySQL. Not that it's a
> good  tool  for  everything.  Just that it's good enough for a lot of
> things, and when it isn't, you can use something else.
>
> Of course, to do this with languages or databases or  any  tool,  you
> have to be familiar with a few something elses ...
>
>
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