> Shift to online/cloud ... they never connect to the Internet.
The fall of VB6 style RAD (for CRUD) started earlier with shift from "workgroups" (shared files on LANs) to client/server. This severed the direct link (ADO api) between apps and their persistence.
Tragically, the ODBC (then JDBC) API interface didn't quite fully bridge the gap. Meaning some necessary metadata was no longer front and center (for both compile and runtime, like ADO had always had). Yielding mitigation attempts like DAO/DTO, ActiveRecord, ORMs, LINQ, templates, etc.
Of course, client/server had to happen. But the innovators (and critics like Neward) didn't fully understood what they were replacing, what parts were missing. (Lather, rinse, repeat.)
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It took noob me a LONG time to figure this out. (All I ever wanted was to recover the special magick of VBA + ADO.) And then even longer to attempt mitigation (cuz am noob).
Maybe if we had the new "internet's hourglass shape" analytical framework from the beginning (vs say OSI's layer model), someone(s) could have prevented the oversight. https://cacm.acm.org/research/on-the-hourglass-model/
> Shift to online/cloud ... they never connect to the Internet.
The fall of VB6 style RAD (for CRUD) started earlier with shift from "workgroups" (shared files on LANs) to client/server. This severed the direct link (ADO api) between apps and their persistence.
Tragically, the ODBC (then JDBC) API interface didn't quite fully bridge the gap. Meaning some necessary metadata was no longer front and center (for both compile and runtime, like ADO had always had). Yielding mitigation attempts like DAO/DTO, ActiveRecord, ORMs, LINQ, templates, etc.
That sad state of affairs is described in Ted Neward's famous "ORMs are the Vietnam of computer science" essay. https://web.archive.org/web/20060813030731/http://blogs.tedn...
Of course, client/server had to happen. But the innovators (and critics like Neward) didn't fully understood what they were replacing, what parts were missing. (Lather, rinse, repeat.)
--
It took noob me a LONG time to figure this out. (All I ever wanted was to recover the special magick of VBA + ADO.) And then even longer to attempt mitigation (cuz am noob).
Maybe if we had the new "internet's hourglass shape" analytical framework from the beginning (vs say OSI's layer model), someone(s) could have prevented the oversight. https://cacm.acm.org/research/on-the-hourglass-model/