[corpMaverick]

I spent years trying to hide the database. Now days I just embrace it. The database is there. Tables and rows are as real as invoices or purchase orders. The database will still be there after my programs and I are gone. I use OOP to construct good gateways into my tables.

[dunmalg]

The struggle is real. Letting go of my local data structures was a surprisingly difficult psychological hurdle. I sometimes wish there'd been someone there to tell me that the easiest paths are basically "all" and "nothing". Unfortunately I was the only programmer in the entire organization so I was making it up as I went along. I struggled for WEEKS playing pull-change-push games with huge duplicate local data structures before it even occurred to me there was a better way.

[gnaritas]

> I use OOP to construct good gateways into my tables.

That's all an ORM is, a good default gateway to the tables that you don't have to write by hand.

[corpMaverick]

ORMs (i.e. Hibernate) try to hide the database. You change the objects and they are magically saved. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20863150/in-the-context-o...

[gnaritas]

I've written ORM's, I don't need them explained to me, and no all ORM's don't try and hide the database, that's just one pattern. Others like ActiveRecord simply try and make life simpler without complete hiding behind so much magic you can't figure out what's going on. ORM's abstract the database, that's not the same as hiding the database.

[yawaramin]

Except for the times when they load all columns into memory and then you programmatically discard almost everything because you really just needed Person#name.

[remotehack]

An ORM is a gateway...not a good gateway.

[gnaritas]

Most disagree, hence the popularity of ORM's.