> Abstractions are a way of trying to find a common ground conceptually.
What's always amused me, in a tortured sort of way, is that SQL is already the abstraction. Then people go and layer an abstraction on top of it, such as some ORM flavor-of-the-day, which is obviously much less universal than SQL. In "SQL" I'm including vendor extensions too (Oracle, MySQL, etc.). It's easier to read up on vendor extensions than learn yet-another ORM.
Which do you think has had the longer shelf life: MySQL or some random Ruby ORM? If you've been doing MySQL since the '90s then it's largely the same as MySQL of 2021. That Ruby ORM? Probably hasn't seen an update since 2008. I can't even remember the names of all the ORMs I've had to use over the years.
What's always amused me, in a tortured sort of way, is that SQL is already the abstraction. Then people go and layer an abstraction on top of it, such as some ORM flavor-of-the-day, which is obviously much less universal than SQL. In "SQL" I'm including vendor extensions too (Oracle, MySQL, etc.). It's easier to read up on vendor extensions than learn yet-another ORM.
Which do you think has had the longer shelf life: MySQL or some random Ruby ORM? If you've been doing MySQL since the '90s then it's largely the same as MySQL of 2021. That Ruby ORM? Probably hasn't seen an update since 2008. I can't even remember the names of all the ORMs I've had to use over the years.