[HN Gopher] The Inner-Platform Effect (2006)
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       The Inner-Platform Effect (2006)
        
       Author : birdculture
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2025-12-22 09:34 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thedailywtf.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thedailywtf.com)
        
       | dvh wrote:
       | It's 2025 why are you gluing SQL strings? Don't even use it as an
       | example!
        
         | zahlman wrote:
         | The post is clearly marked as being from 2006.
        
           | JadeNB wrote:
           | Also it's from TheDailyWTF, not an endorsement of the
           | practices there even in 2006.
        
         | recursive wrote:
         | Perhaps to facilitate a dynamically generated schema.
        
       | kristianp wrote:
       | I've seen these custom fields tables in a number of database
       | schemas I've worked with in the past. It adds dynamism to a fixed
       | table structure. I wonder how CRMs do it these days without
       | having poor performance at scale?
        
         | Normal_gaussian wrote:
         | Being able to partial index into JSON has made this much more
         | straight forwards now than ever before, but historically pre-
         | creating empty indexed custom columns was somewhat common
         | (leading to hard limits like max 20 custom tags), as was EAV
         | (which arguably is inner-platform).
         | 
         | There are more solutions than these, but until you're at truly
         | custom DB scale with a specific problem here, these will solve
         | it for you.
        
       | Artoooooor wrote:
       | From time to time I send this article at my job. Just as a
       | distress call about our system.
        
         | Normal_gaussian wrote:
         | There is something to reading something from 20 or 40 years ago
         | and having a professional existential crisis.
        
       | stevage wrote:
       | Reminds me a lot of a final year group software project at uni.
       | Instead of building a solution for our client we built a kind of
       | meta solution, then ran out of time to actually solve his problem
       | in it.
        
       | bob1029 wrote:
       | I've made the mistake of creating this kind of problem many moons
       | ago. The dream was to have non-technical domain experts implement
       | the product. I did not know at the time that this was a cursed
       | problem. Probably one of the most cursed, in fact.
       | 
       | Putting it my sql based scripting engine took 2 weeks. Backing it
       | out is going on 4 years now. Perhaps the biggest technical
       | misstep I've ever made. It's kind of like Pandora's box because
       | once the non technical people feel the speed/control, they'll
       | never let it go. You could place a literal money printer on their
       | desk as an alternative and they'd reject it if you took their new
       | power away.
        
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       (page generated 2025-12-25 23:01 UTC)