Pacabel

Even those reasons are really stretching for it these days.

There are numerous ways of dealing with hierarchical or otherwise structured data using relational DBs. Support for recursive CTEs is becoming more common, which makes such querying quite clean and simple. And with many relational systems offering support for storing and manipulating XML and JSON data, storing more structured data becomes a non-issue.

I think that SQL managing to hide a lot of the underlying implementation details is one of its strongest points. In many situations the defaults are more than sufficient, saving developers and users a significant time. Yes, there are situations where more control over the exact handling is needed, but it gives ways of managing this. At least a simplified, high-level abstraction is offered; many NoSQL systems immediately force you to take a very low-level approach for even the simplest of queries.

And I don't see the ability to intentionally lose data as something that's good, either. The database should be concerned with doing everything in its power to protect and ensure the integrity of the data it has been given. If it's fine to lose some of that data, then whatever or whoever is providing that data should just not provide it to the DB in the first place.

So while some people may present those as possible disadvantages of SQL, I just don't think the arguments really hold up upon further scrutiny.

"Movement" is a good term for it.

There are a lot of people out there who have a quasi-religious attitude toward NoSQL databases.

It's a cause for them to rally around. In some ways, it gives them something to "fight" for.

Objective consideration about whether it's the best technology to use in a given situation is often disregarded.

There are a very small number of very rare situations where such technology is the best or most feasible approach. Otherwise, it's merely something that a lot of people get involved with in order to intentionally avoid learning how to use SQL and relational databases, or to feel like they "belong" to some greater cause.

I don't think that's necessarily the definition of "NoSQL database".

Databases that predate Codd's work, or long-established ones like dbm and BDB, may appear similar to modern-day NoSQL databases in how they operate, but they surely aren't the same.

Those systems couldn't use relational theory or SQL because they didn't exist yet, or at least didn't reject them outright as one of their main goals.

NoSQL databases, on the other hand, are completely about rejecting relational theory and rejecting SQL. That's at the very core of their philosophy.

True NoSQL databases have been developed as a reaction to several things:

1. A very, very, very small number of situations where relational DB systems cannot easily scale.

2. The far more widespread ignorance of the basics of relational theory, and a lack of willingness to learn about it.

3. The far more widespread ignorance of SQL, and a lack of willingness to learn about it.

4. An urge to be "different" solely for the sake of being different, even if it brings no technological benefit.

5. Unmitigated hype surrounding the term "NoSQL".

Of those, 1) is perhaps the only legitimate reason for using a NoSQL approach today. The number of times this sort of a situation actually arises is remarkably small.

The other four are why those databases have become more widely used, especially within the web development community. As anyone who has dealt with such systems knows, they're rarely about safely and reliably storing and managing data, and they're rarely about doing this efficiently. They're merely a shortcut that some developers use to avoid learning how to use a RDMS.

I think that you've misunderstood my comment just as you've apparently misunderstood American culture.

Instead of trying to truly understand American culture, I think you've just ended up injecting a lot of presumed malice that just isn't there in reality.

What you and your friend see as "pressure", many Americans would consider just being friendly and sociable.

What you see as an unreasonable request, many Americans would see as merely trying to be considerate of others and what they have to smell while at the office.

And as I stated earlier, I'm not even an American. But I do realize that American culture is unique in many ways, and it's far more enjoyable to interact with Americans if you put forth the effort to understand where they're coming from, and why they act the way that they do.

That's nonsense.

Bullying is done out of malice. Encouraging somebody to enjoy a celebratory shot of alcohol after a big event is, in America, a show of friendship and camaraderie.

Yes, Americans can often be assertive, especially in a playful or friendly manner. That's part of American culture. As a foreigner, it's best to understand this.

No, it's not something that happens every day. But celebratory drinking after a significant event is a very common American custom.

Based on what the earlier commenter wrote ("her teammates pressured her to drink a Vodka shot after a major deploy"), it apparently happened after a major software deployment. For small startups with close-knit teams who've just put in a lot of effort, this can be a big event, and cause for such celebration.

This may not have even happened at the work place, mind you. The original comment isn't totally clear, but it's not at all unusual for an American software development team to go out for a few drinks at a nearby bar, especially after completing some important work.

To most of the Americans there, it was probably a very insignificant thing. I don't see how they should be at fault for encouraging somebody else to engage in a pretty typical, and generally harmless, American social activity.

What makes you think they "forced" it on her?

The earlier commenter wrote that "her teammates pressured her".

While I don't know the particulars of this situation, it sure doesn't sound like they physically restrained her, forced open her mouth and poured alcohol down her throat, or anything that extreme.

It was probably just verbal encouragement to try something she apparently hadn't done before, delivered in a friendly, although perhaps overt, manner. This is pretty common within American culture, when facing somebody who hasn't indulged in something that most Americans have. They'll encourage you to try it, and if you resist, they'll still encourage you to try it.

Yes, somebody who isn't used to this aspect of American culture may consider it to be a form of "pressure". But the intent is probably good-natured, and it's more about helping somebody try new experiences rather than control.

Most of the Americans I've dealt with, especially in a work setting, would not truly force the consumption of alcohol on somebody else, of course. Explaining to them that you don't drink, for whatever reason, will very likely put the matter to rest quickly. They may still playfully poke fun at you because of it, but that's just part of American culture.

Heating up food that doesn't cause odors that enough others in the office apparently dislike, obviously.

I find your attitude confusing.

Yes, America has its own culture. Yes, it's often different in many ways from what's typically found in India. But none of this is a secret.

Anyone who travels, whether for a short term or for much longer, to a country with distinctly different culture and customs should be prepared to adapt somewhat. Or at the very least, they should not be offended when the culture conflicts with what they're accustomed to.

I don't think it's unreasonable to request that one staff member not cook food that others in the office may find to smell bad. Such a request isn't about race or gender or anything like that, obviously. I don't doubt that the same request would be made to an American who chose to cook the same food.

The same goes for celebratory alcohol consumption after big events. It's just part of American culture in general. It happens when celebrating accomplishments of all sorts.

It's one thing to avoid overt, unjustified discrimination. But I don't think that American companies should have to bend over backward to accommodate people who don't want to accept, or at least tolerate, the basic aspects of American culture, either.

I say this as somebody who isn't even an American, by the way. This should hold true regardless of the company, where it's located, and where the foreign employees are from.

If you want to work in a foreign country, you should be willing to adapt to their established cultural norms. If you don't like American culture and customs, for whatever reason, maybe you shouldn't live there.

Yes, "mathematics" is a relatively narrow concept, even if it embodies a great deal of knowledge.

When it comes to mathematics, the exact form of the outcome isn't very important. Maybe it's a valid proof in one case, maybe it's a specific number in another case.

It's the degree of rigor that's important. Rigor is what separates mathematics from other fields of study.

Thinking and reasoning about abstract concepts aren't without value, of course. But if this is done without an extreme degree of rigor, it probably should not be considered to be mathematics.

The "downvote if you disagree" has gotten to a rather stupid point here lately.

In nearly every submission I read the comments of these days, I see numerous perfectly fine and valuable comments in gray text.

Since so much good content ends up in that state, it renders such styling pointless. Gray text no longer means that the content is very likely commercial spam or otherwise without much value.

I even go out of my way to read all of those comments. With so much good content being downvoted these days, they often have some of the more insightful remarks.

From what I can tell, the author of the article wanted her students to engage in philosophy rather than mathematics, but maybe didn't make this clear to them.

Mathematics is indeed all about rigor, proof, and finding "correct answers". Philosophy, on the other hand, takes a more lenient approach, with emphasis on the process of thinking, rather than the final result.

Perhaps the children in this class merely thought that a more mathematics-oriented approach was what the teacher desired. That's reasonable, if that's how their previous classes had been done.

Apparently the students themselves adjusted quickly enough, once the teacher made her expectations clear. As the article states, "Things went so much better the second time around with not one student asking me if their answer was “right”".

So this could very well come down to a simple misunderstanding between the teacher and her students, in this rather isolated case.

I've discussed this with several other hiring managers I know. We've all taken at least one MOOC course, and while they may be useful for the learning experience, we agreed that we couldn't trust the credentials.

One trend that we all noticed is for students, nearly always from developing nations, to focus solely on the credentials and very little on the course material itself.

Even before the courses were complete, with coursework submission deadlines still looming, we'd see people post stuff like "I'm still waiting for my certificate! When will I get it?" in the courses' discussion forums.

After the course had completed and the certificates were awarded, there would inevitably be many more of these students asking why they haven't received theirs, even after openly admitting to not doing most or even all of the required coursework.

For these people, it was all about getting a PDF of a certificate containing their names. Learning anything at all wasn't even a consideration.

While traditional academic institutions may have similar problems, it's never to such an extreme as with MOOCs. At least students at any reputable institution will have had to demonstrate at least some understanding of the material being taught.

What benefits would you see Modula-3 offering over the numerous other languages available today?

There wasn't anything particularly special about it when I last used it in the 1990s. It wasn't a bad language, but there wasn't anything particularly compelling about it or its implementations, either. There was nothing that really made it more useful than C++, or even Delphi and Java.

Spare us the hyperbole and the misrepresentation, please.

userbinator makes a very valid and legitimate point: regardless of what safety features a programming language may or may not offer, it's still critical for the programmer to understand exactly what's actually happening.

You can't have true safety through tools alone. Operator knowledge is just as critical as whatever safety features the tool may offer.

Notice that he wrote "features". That's plural, meaning more than one. And then notice that he wrote "such as validating phone numbers". The "such as" part indicates that phone number validation is just one example among several. I'm sure he's quite well aware that phone numbers alone are insufficient. That's why they would likely be combined with other approaches.

It isn't just "anecdotal" when you happen to be the one who has to use a computer that crashes in such a way, regardless of who makes it, or what OS it's running.

I don't see anybody claiming that you have to be.

It is generally an environment and context that can lead to resources being expended in ways that would be very unlikely to happen in more commercial settings, however.

Businesses do tend to avoid such mishaps in the first place, or at least manage to stop them earlier.

In practice, an "open standard" that has only been suitably implemented by just one party really isn't all that open.

Now, maybe there's a greater chance that the situation will change, and other suitable implementations will eventually arise. But until that happens, an open standard with one usable implementation really isn't different from a closed standard at all.

Is that worthwhile, though?

Whenever the issue of Firefox's performance or resource usage comes up, the response is usually along the lines of, "There are no problems."

Then somebody usually links to http://arewefastyet.com/, using it as "evidence" that Firefox is somehow faster than the competition.

Meanwhile, there are many of us sitting here using Firefox, suffering from the poor performance that was initially inquired about, wondering how it could possibly be claimed that such an obvious problem "does not exist".

He suggests using it to store some very basic info about the tasks that have been completed each day. So this is maybe a couple thousand rows per year, with several columns each, all for personal use.

Are you really suggesting that somebody not spend the 2 or 3 minutes it'd take to set this up in Excel or LibreOffice or some other spreadsheet program, and instead spend far longer using some other database software, for basically no gain?

Even just finding, downloading and unpacking a SQLite binary release will take longer, and that's before creating a schema and anything to help make it easier to work with.

Is there anything particularly notable about this release? The release notes make it sound quite minor, with a small handful of bug fixes.

Is that a problem with TDD, or is that just a problem with teams choosing to use bad tooling and processes?

I've seen teams waste a lot of time trying to get various CI systems integrating with various TDD frameworks, generating lots of reports that nobody really ever looks at. Or they waste a lot of time writing elaborate frameworks that build upon some existing TDD framework.

But all of that has basically nothing to do with TDD. It has nothing to do with the act of writing tests first, and developing the actual code based on the success or failure of those tests.

I think the comparison is much more valid that you're making it out to be.

There's just as much "blind following" in many college programs as there may be in CrossFit, or even religion. Questioning what you're taught, or how you're taught it, or even the methods you've been told to use while learning the material, is tantamount to academic "death". So we see a lot of people just go along with it to avoid low marks or other forms of retribution they may face if they question the system. This can even cause physical and mental hardship for some people.

But I don't see how it isn't the participant's fault if the participant can't or won't say, "This could unreasonably harm me; I'm not doing it.", and then keeps participating to the point of harm taking place.

We're talking about something that they're voluntarily doing, after all. If these people lack the judgment to know what their boundaries are, and when they might be exceeding them, then I don't see how anyone but the participants are responsible for any harm that may happen. Nobody but the participant, regardless of whether they're participating in college or physical training, is responsible if the participant lacks the self control to stop engaging in a completely voluntary, yet harmful, behavior.

It is a form of moderation. It may not be as extreme as outright deletion, but it does make the comment harder to read, which is a mild form of censorship.

And, yes, I'm aware of why it can happen, and how one can deal with it. It's just a trend that's getting far worse than I remember it being. There was one Python submission I saw yesterday where probably 1/3rd of the comments were greyed out when I viewed it. It becomes distracting, and makes it harder to read the comments.

I usually end up reading them anyway, since so much legitimate and valuable content is now shown in grey so often. It defeats the purpose of displaying comments like that when so much good content has so frequently been mis-voted down.

I don't get the moderation here at HN these days. Currently, the comment I'm replying to has been voted down, and I can't for the life of me figure out why.

The content seems very reasonable, informative and detailed to me, even if it may partially contradict the submission's article. It gave me a different perspective on the issue, which I find useful. I see absolutely no reason why it should be greyed out.

I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up getting voted up soon enough, too. It's just disappointing to see so many totally legitimate and valid comments ending up in this state these days.

The horrible design of the page itself made it damn near impossible for me to follow the message they were trying to express.

Its design is really all over the place. There's no consistency when it comes to the font sizes, capitalization, text colors, and paragraph width. The images and text are mixed in a disruptive manner. Some of the images are pointless and irrelevant, yet still take up a large chunk of the visible portion of the page.

After reading a chunk of text, it'd take far too much effort and time to search around to figure out where they were continuing. That proves to be very distracting.

I eventually gave up rather quickly. They should just offer their message as a plain article, without such a frenzied design taking away from whatever it is they're trying to say.

Those of us who have been around for a while will remember hearing that claim made about the JVM back in the late 1990s, back when HotSpot came onto the scene.

Obviously, those claims did not hold true in practice.

HotSpot has had some very talented people work on it. And Java bytecode is much more suited to such optimization than asm.js is, too. If it wasn't accomplished there, then it's doubtful it'll be done elsewhere.

So maybe it's theoretically possible, but we just haven't seen it happen in practice. There's little to suggest that it ever will happen, too.

There is really no need for you to engage in petty personal insults like that just because you happen to disagree with what I wrote earlier.

If you wish to discuss this further, please return to the topic at hand.

That was true in 1995. It's now 2014. There has been ample time to fix the many flaws. There's no justifiable reason why, nearly 20 years on, JavaScript is still so inherently busted in so many ways.