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by Winsaucerer
1346 days ago
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Horror stories like this are always fun to read. I've become a fan of avoiding ORM's and API's between front end and back end for websites. Want a page that shows a dashboard of xyz? Write the right query that fetches exactly what you want, render the HTML, and return it. Super simple, and abstractions are at a great minimum. No SQL->ORM->API->frontend, each with their own twist on how they model the world. A splash of JS (perhaps via HTMX or Alpine), and this can take you a long way. |
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I then saw the team wanting to convert it to ActiveRecord, which they started. But lots of queries had to use AREL (Rails' "low level SQL AST abstraction"), since they weren't really possible or just too difficult to do in ActiveRecord.
But AREL is so incredibly unreadable that every single AREL query often had its equivalent in plain SQL above it, as documentation, so new people could understand what the hell it was doing.
In the end some junior was unhappy with the inconsistent documentation and petitioned that every query, simple or complex, AREL or ActiveRecord, had to be documented using SQL above the AREL/AR code.
Then they discovered that documenting using Heredocs rather than "language comments" enabled SQL syntax highlighting in their editors.
After that we had both: heredocs with the cute SQL and some unreadable AREL+AR monstrosity right below it.
I still laugh about this situation when I remember it.