Oh boy, I may be offending many people out there.
But, I just so happen to be working on two projects in .NET, where the Data Model was designed by someone else. And in both cases, the databases are completely over-normalized. So normalized to the point that it puts the developers in a state of paralysis. In both projects, they were expected to have extremely quick turnaround times, one was an initial 2 week project, that’s now grown to 2 months. And the other was a 3 month project that appears to either be cancelled or turned into a 5 – 6 month project.
Sure, I am a .NET developer, but I was raised in both worlds Open Source and Microsoft. But the world that took me was the open source world, the wild west, where people have budgets and need things quickly, of-course securely, efficiently, and strategically, but FAST. And it seems that each time I run into a .NET raised developer, the need to over-normalize skews and destroys estimates. Please don’t take offense if you are a .NET raised developer.
I get it, we all want Object Relational Models (ORM) where we don’t have to use SQL. Where we can do direct data pulls and saves at the ease of a function call. Where databases mean nothing. But often times, such as Entity Framework, its like the model must always remain in constant sync with the database, thus any Open Source technique to alter the database, you suddenly destroy your relations with your ORM. In my opinion, the Open Source techniques to ORM’s should be implemented and integrated into .NET, as they are now being done today. Where ORM’s derive their models from the Database, not the definitions that are independent of the database.
So, I’ve picked on .NET developers enough, let me pick on PHP developers now! F***, oh boy. Dear PHP developers… Okay, let me start off by saying I was raised a PHP also, and I LOVE Open Source tremendously compared to those strict data types, framework heavy dogs, and over computational IDE’s. But for the love of goodness, 75% of the people who claim to be a PHP developer, You are Not a PHP Developer!
There are so many fake PHP developers out there in this world it is absolutely sickening. Not to say that you do not find this in the .NET world, or dare I say the Sharepoint world as well. But PHP is riddled with uneducated, self (poorly) taught administrators of websites who have installed WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal at some point in their lives and now automatically consider themselves a PHP developer. Concepts of MVC are unknown to the majority of them, it’s just crazy.
So now that I’ve picked on PHP developers, .NET developers, and touched on a little bit of Sharepoint, I have to remind you, and mostly remind myself, that the world of the Web has GROWN so tremendously. The term Web Developer does not even describe what a Web Developer was when I was first developing on the web. The past two years, there’s been a tremendous influx of UX/UI developers as well. The amount of Software Engineers and IT Professionals who program, design, and work on the web is exponential in size compared to what it was 10 years ago in 2003. We have adapted labels and terms to account for the influx of professionals and we have ruined the old definitions and job descriptions. Even the term Architect is often over-used and over-tossed.
There are so many people on the web, managing, building, and designing the web. There are so many skills and so few who actually have a grasp of all the skills and what’s needed to fulfill all components of a full website. So we deal with confusion, mis-hiring, poor title management, interpretation of responsibilities, and well simply, a mess. Some do it well, IBM has proved that to me. But in the wild west of world wide web, even in the $1B+ world, there’s a lot of nonsense going on.
Did this blog clarify it? I highly doubt it. All I did with this post was voice my frustration. lol. Take it for what it is, and I hope I effectively offended many, just because… I also fulfill all those roles.
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