Martin Fowler: ORM Hate (martinfowler.com)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org to c/programming@programming.dev

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This is a pragmatic piece of Fowler on the rather dry topic of Object-relational mappings - in short, the attempt to marry an object-oriented code base with a relational data base.

Usually you'd get enough early success to commit deeply to the framework and only after a while did you realize you were in a quagmire - this is where I sympathize greatly with Ted Neward's famous quote that object-relational mapping is the Vietnam of Computer Science

What Fowler refers to here, is Ted Neward's article "The Vietnam Of Computer Science"

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[-] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 25 points 5 days ago

You don't need ORMs to prevent SQL injection. Prepared statements have existed for decades.

[-] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 3 points 5 days ago

That's what I thought too: https://programming.dev/comment/22854391

But it seems to be possible to still do them wrong.

[-] Kissaki@programming.dev 6 points 4 days ago

If you don't use the parameter functionality of prepared statements, yeah. That also means you don't use a prepared statement, you construct varying sql strings and prepare varying "prepared" statements.

this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026

33 points (92.3% liked)

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