I was having dinner with two girls, one a project manager and the other some finance reviewer or something like that. We were discussing our line of work and I was talking about how bad quality code affects everybody and the finance reviewer girl goes like (and I quote) "In our company we use polymorphism, inheritance and encapsulation so it's not a big problem. So our database has a parent class and we only use the parent class". I was at a loss for words. I mean, if only more programmers just did that, right?

That sounds exactly like something pointer haired boss in a Dilbert comic strip would say.

@monkeyboy you read my mind

...and it's so difficult to answer to that, without insulting and to stay quiet without looking a looser or an incompetent

Tbh you can just explain to her where she's wrong by continuing the conversation. She'd like to learn too cause then she can appear smarter next time she talks to someone else. I can imagine some programmer trying to explain it to her in the first place in a very human matter and this is what she took from it, and thats fine to start with. Doesn't mean she's dumb or anything, she's just confident that what she was told and what she understood is correct, but if you just treat her as a normal human and explain to her that the database is separate from the model in code and that polymorphism is a common concept she can benefit from that too. And honestly explaining simple concepts to others is an useful soft skill anyway

@deviloper yep. I stammered for a few seconds trying to reply something lest my facial expressions give away my thoughts at the moment and finally gave up sounding like she outdid me in my own field.

@Hazarth I beg to differ. I see what you mean and I appreciate it. And honestly, I'm more than glad to politely explain things to people. But thing is more often than not, it simply serves to insult them. Like in this situation, had I pointed out the error, she would have simply been embarassed and would have most probably taken it personally especially since this was in front of another girl. This is not her first time bulshitting about something she doesn't really know. People who are pretentious may not not like being corrected. I didn't want to take the risk of creating any sort of bad vibes between us coz I don't have a lot of friends to hang out with and I'm not gonna risk losing the few people I have. :p

"That... that doesn't make sense. Databases don't have classes, nor inheritance at all. The rest is fine, and used in most applications, actually. It certainly isn't a cure-all, though.. the biggest problem, of which nobody has even an idea about the solution, is managing complexity. The functional paradigm helps, but only so much. Eventually every software application becomes a tangled spider's web."

@Root you are right that relational databases traditionally dont have inheritance and classes.

But other database types like graph databses (neo4j), knowledge graphs (virtuoso), and even schema-less document based (mongo through mongoose) databases do too.

I know of a certain company that turns SQL based databases into knowledge graphs where you can model an ontology and so they support classes, inheritance and a logical reasoner on top of SQL.

@bioDan Fair! You are indeed right. I suppose I just assume people are using relational db's unless they actually specify Mongo. Mongo users are kind of like arch linux users and drunk users: they can't stop telling everyone 😅

I might just throw it back and get even more technical, but then apologize and say I'm getting too technical then ask if she knew what I was saying to see how far she'd take the bullshittery.

ouch, that polymorphism bs was very hard to read...

@deviloper a lose lose situation

@erandria ahahah fuck the win-win morons

I think she's into you and trying to impress you. Go for it man

@Froot Lol, I'm pretty convinced that's not the case but hehe, that's probably one of the worst ways to impress me. And that's saying something because I'm easily impressed. :p