I just want to say that this is one of the only places that I totally geek out on develpment anymore. Every other place on the net seems to be obsessed with the future.

I'm more of a "backend" thinker.

I give Otis total respect for doing the things I didn't have to do. Everthing, as far as extending, I do with this framework, I've been giving back to you guys and I love it. And there has been a lot of good people helping me.

We are close to having a whole business layer built with LLBLGen

Jobless and drunk, Chris

Thanks Chris

I really needed this after my a$$ was flamed to pieces once more by the pro-procedure squad in comp.databases (I didn't want to participate in there, but they insulted my personally because of my anti-proc article... ). Oh well, part of the job of explaining things I guess...

Hang in there, buddy, you'll land a job somewhere soon.

Otis wrote:

Thanks Chris

I really needed this after my a$$ was flamed to pieces once more by the pro-procedure squad in comp.databases (I didn't want to participate in there, but they insulted my personally because of my anti-proc article... ). Oh well, part of the job of explaining things I guess...

Hang in there, buddy, you'll land a job somewhere soon.

It pisses me off that they would do that. I didn't see the conversation, so what's their beef? How can they comment on a product they've never used and what on earth do they use that comes even remotely close to LLBLGen?

I think maybe they spend most of the time with their noses in books written 10 years ago.

When I see this kind of thing it reminds me very much of religion. Some people adhere to ideologies that don't always continue to serve them and those around them, but do so out of tradition, respect, financial, and family (corporate) reasons.

Following the example of religion, I've always believed the best way to convert people to your religion (should you want to) is to lead the life of your beliefs. Allow people to view your success and happiness over time, and they will wonder about your secrets.

Oh, and don't blow people up in the name of your religion, literally, or on newsgroups. That doesn't convert people for the long run.

thanks guys

Apparently according to this professor D.A. Morgan I have little to no understanding of relational theory whatsoever (or software design and database programs) and the only way of doing things right with databases is by writing one layer with stored procedures and that's it.

As he's a teacher, I won't blame him for this lack of insight in what else has to be done before a real application can see the light of day, but it was pretty tiresome. It's not worth the time, these people.

Nicely put btw, Scott

Thats absurb. I can honestly say in all my years, I have never "known" anyone so clued up about software development, and certainly about database relations. To write a O/R mapper as thorough and well recieved as llblgen, to say you dont know about database relations is hilarious.

MattWoberts wrote:

Thats absurb. I can honestly say in all my years, I have never "known" anyone so clued up about software development, and certainly about database relations. To write a O/R mapper as thorough and well recieved as llblgen, to say you dont know about database relations is hilarious.

Yeah, I second that.

In addition, you provide an exceptional level of support for your product and your product has greatly reduced the headaches of dealing with the interactions between a Business layer and the data layer.

Don't let them get you down!

Well I will just say this, me being a newbie to programming, you all have helped me tremendously, especially frans. You all are light years ahead of me and many of the topics you discuss are difficult to understand, but nevertherless, there is always a gem in those discussions that even I can use. Frans, The support you give is frankly awsome, so keep up the good work, it will definately pay off.

Otis wrote:

Thanks Chris

I really needed this after my a$$ was flamed to pieces once more by the pro-procedure squad in comp.databases (I didn't want to participate in there, but they insulted my personally because of my anti-proc article... ). Oh well, part of the job of explaining things I guess...

Hang in there, buddy, you'll land a job somewhere soon.

Screw those guys man . They are just scared (and rightfully so) that a tool, such as yours, will render them almost useless soon.

Thanks for the encouragement on the job thing. I think I just landed something today.

MattWoberts wrote:

Thats absurb. I can honestly say in all my years, I have never "known" anyone so clued up about software development, and certainly about database relations. To write a O/R mapper as thorough and well recieved as llblgen, to say you dont know about database relations is hilarious.

Yeah, I don't know what it is with some people in newsgroups. I'm in newsgroups since '89, and know what a flamewar is, but the last 5-7 years I realized that some people can't think out of a box. They're locked inside that world and perhaps know every detail inside that box, but forget that that box is not a standalone object, which therefore renders their view on the world a bit pointless.

mattsmith321 wrote:

In addition, you provide an exceptional level of support for your product and your product has greatly reduced the headaches of dealing with the interactions between a Business layer and the data layer. Don't let them get you down!

I won't (not anymore). In the early days I would have went on and on in such a discussion but that's pointless. Just walk out of there, there is nothing to win.

And it's not all misery, I mean: if you write a controversial article, you have to expect some feedback which is perhaps irrational and not what you'd expect.

erichar11 wrote:

Well I will just say this, me being a newbie to programming, you all have helped me tremendously, especially frans. You all are light years ahead of me and many of the topics you discuss are difficult to understand, but nevertherless, there is always a gem in those discussions that even I can use. Frans, The support you give is frankly awsome, so keep up the good work, it will definately pay off.

Great to hear this place gives various developers not only support for things they run into but also better knowledge and understanding of writing software in general Cool

cmartinbot wrote:

Otis wrote:

Thanks Chris I really needed this after my a$$ was flamed to pieces once more by the pro-procedure squad in comp.databases (I didn't want to participate in there, but they insulted my personally because of my anti-proc article... ). Oh well, part of the job of explaining things I guess... Hang in there, buddy, you'll land a job somewhere soon.

Screw those guys man . They are just scared (and rightfully so) that a tool, such as yours, will render them almost useless soon.

heh yeah that's my idea as well. However, and this is the odd part, their job will shift towards more data-mining work, at least if I have to believe the SqlServer design team, which said that datamining is the next big thing for databases. (in some channel 9 video). But if they're rusty and stick to the old thing they know about, their future is not that great, as more and more apps will move away from procs in general (there will always be applications with procs of course)

Thanks for the encouragement on the job thing. I think I just landed something today.

Great! Congratulations!

What I'm pretty interested in now is what Frans, personally, does not like about his own software (LLBLGen).

What would you have done differently? What do you like about your competitors' products?

Every developer has those thoughts ("I know I shouldn't have three separate FormatEmailAddress functions scattered throughout this project."). I understand if this isn't the place to talk about that or if it's not part of your strategy. That's why I asked at the bottom of this lonely, slightly related thread.

What I would have done differently was: - first write adapter, then write selfservicing as a wrapper for adapter. This would eliminate a lot of the code now in selfservicing. - add inheritance from the start - add a textbased query language from the start.

inheritance and a textbased query language will be addressed in the first half of 2005, for the current code base, the restructuring of teh generated code is scheduled for v2 for .net 2.0.

There are a lot of tiny things which could have done better, but all in all I'm rather satisfied with what the application can do and what I was able to write in the past 2 years of full time development . The current gui update in development should eliminate a large group of tiny quircks I personally don't like that much, plus should give more body to the designer.

What I regret was that the original design for llblgen pro was based around stored procedures which costed me 3 months of development time.

Thanks for the great reply! The fact that you know where the problem areas are even enhances the fact that LLBLGen is destined for greatness.

Another curious question though: Do you have a "real job" or is LLBLGen your primary source of income? And related to that, are you the only developer on the LLBLGen project? I've noticed you use "we" instead of "I" a couple of times.

alexdresko wrote:

Thanks for the great reply! The fact that you know where the problem areas are even enhances the fact that LLBLGen is destined for greatness.

Well, I can't determine all problem area's myself as some problems only occur with very large projects, like thousands of tables and procedures.

Another curious question though: Do you have a "real job" or is LLBLGen your primary source of income? And related to that, are you the only developer on the LLBLGen project? I've noticed you use "we" instead of "I" a couple of times.

I'm the only developer on LLBLGen Pro and I'm working on it since jan 1st 2003 full time (funded by our own money (during jan-sept) so we're very healthy and not tied to some investor) Marketing/website/some docs/financial stuff is done by Aglaia, I do development and most of teh design of the code. Code design ideas are sometimes discussed with others who I know they'll hammer down a bad design

Being the only developer is IMHO more productive than being with 2 developers, although I can just type in the code as fast as 1 person can type of course . What I don't have is endless meetings with people who have a skewed vision on how the project should end up . Though you can never leave the customer's demands out of your sight of course. I use todolist for listing any customer demand categorized and then per upgrade I mark the items I think are reasonable and meet the long term vision for the project.

What's great is that although the number of customers increases every month, the number of support requests is rather stable. This leaves a fixed amount of time per day for new development, which is great as I now don't have to hire extra programmers because the support pressure gets too high. (I will if that happens though ).

It's the best job you can have: create what you want to create and users love it, what more do you want (it's hard work, but fully worth it )

Otis wrote:

It's the best job you can have: create what you want to create and users love it, what more do you want (it's hard work, but fully worth it )

I know this type of conversation takes away from more important issues, so thank you very much for your replies! For someone like me who is struggling to become the best developer possible, that last statement is something to look forward to.

Now, go about your work!

Ok boss