Comments on: Pulling others up

By: Jon Kruger

Jon Kruger — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:17:53 +0000

@John,

I don’t know that dynamic SQL generated from your code is really that bad. DBAs would probably disagree with you and they might make some good points about how stored procs are better and you could argue about that all day.

My thing is that if you’re writing code that generates dynamic SQL, you’re probably reinventing the wheel because we have ORM tools that do that for us now. That’s why I tend to think it’s a “code smell” if you’re writing the dynamic SQL generation yourself.

By: John Gwynn

John Gwynn — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:55:42 +0000

The arguments for SQL are solid. We really need context here to make any intelligent assumptions about what constitutes the “best practice.” To that end any developer with experience knows that you must put your personal ideology aside when working with any non-trivial system in favor of what “has been already working.” A lot of time an money has been wasted on trying to move a specific code base to conform to a trendy “best practice” with absolutely nothing but heartache to show for return on investment.

By: blindman

blindman — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:36:27 +0000

Sean, I was about to tell you exactly how lame and ignorant your arguments are, but then I thought about Jon’s blog post and I figure I’ll just hope that someday someone comes along who can show you the right way to do things, and that you’ll listen.

By: Jon Kruger’s Blog » Facilitating change

Jon Kruger’s Blog » Facilitating change — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:09:34 +0000

[...] Pulling others up [...]

By: Chris Deweese

Chris Deweese — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:08:21 +0000

Great post Jon! I run into this alot and your final two sentences sum it up perfectly. You have to show them the alternative and how it fits into their style while acknowledging what they currently know and what works for them.

Thanks for posting this one!

By: Sean Hederman

Sean Hederman — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:00:16 +0000

Let me add a defence of writing the SQL in the class:
- In most cases the performance improvements of sprocs are minimal and not important for the app in question
- As long as you use parameterised queries it is just as safe
- It keeps all the code relevant to the method local where you can view it in one go, as opposed to hunting through for the .sql file
- It means no-one can change your SQL code under you unexpectedly (e.g. change the sproc to use nolock when it really, really shouldn’t)
- If you write ANSI standard SQL your code will now automatically work on any database without any porting of anything other than schema

By: Paul Zubkov

Paul Zubkov — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:04:50 +0000

Great post, could not agree with you more. Took me a year to convince the rest of the team to do unit testing, and what finally did it was an example of finding number of bugs in one function after writing a simple set of tests.

By: DotNetShoutout

DotNetShoutout — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:10:53 +0000

Jon Kruger’s Blog » Pulling others up…

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By: Dave Erwin

Dave Erwin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:41:39 +0000

Good post. The other thing that I’ll add to Hudson’s comment is that at some level we’re ALL “That Guy” right now! We’ve made a decision to go in some direction and as fast as architectures, methodologies, platforms, frameworks and the like are changing we may not be using the current “best practices”. Business demands that we deliver software within their constraints and spinning in circles adopting this week’s best practice doesn’t get it done.

By: Hudson Akridge

Hudson Akridge — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:57:43 +0000

Very true. I think one of the great things about our community is that many people genuinely want to help others out. Sure, there’s the egotistical developer every now and again, but by and large, there’s a lot of us that just want to lift other developers up.

Why? Because most of us remember when we were “That Guy” that was doing dynamic Sql, and along came someone else, or some article that we read, where we were shown a better way to do things. It’s our way of giving back. The better the community is, by and large, the more progress we make as a whole.