[Email #3 of 4] Let’s build an engine

I can’t build frontends.

Trust me, I tried. And it always turned out the same. It worked but didn’t look good and was very hard to use.

Maybe I just don’t have an eye for those things.

I … and my coworkers … recognized that early on when I was still a student intern.

So, instead of working on the front end, I always worked on the backend part and got really good at it.

Over the years, I realized one thing:

The business logic might be the brain of your application that decides what to do and where to go. But the persistence layer is the engine that keeps everything moving and decides how fast and far you can go.

Let’s face it. The goal of every application is to manage data to achieve something. How efficiently you manage that data determines what you can actually do with it …

… and how long your users have to wait for it.

OK, let’s stick to the image of an engine for a bit.

How would you build an engine?

Would you just order a bunch of random parts online, slap them together, and hope it works?

Or would you first want to know how an engine works, select the required, high-quality parts, and then have someone show you how to put them together correctly?

Option 1 might seem to be quicker and easier. But it’s also where the engine blows up more often than it works!

Option 2 looks like more work in the beginning, but it will give you much better results. And you will be able to apply your knowledge to every engine you’ll build in the future over and over again.

So, I hope you agree that option 2 is the better choice.

But why do so many developers ignore that when building their persistence layer?

They copy annotations and code snippets from StackOverflow and hope it will somehow work.

Maybe it’s because a persistence layer often seems like a black box that’s impossible to understand.

But that’s not the case. There is a simple way to clearly see what’s going on inside. You can think of it as X-ray vision for your persistence layer.

And as soon as I figured that out, everything got so much easier. It completely changed how I learned about new features and built my persistence layers.

I’ll tell you what that is tomorrow.

It’s incredibly simple.

Speak tomorrow,

Thorben

PS: While you’re waiting for my next email, I’d love to know … Which persistence framework are you using:

• Hibernate ORM

• EclipseLink

• Spring Data JPA

• jOOQ

• Spring Data JDBC

• Other

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