Where database blog posts get flame-broiled to perfection
Alright, let me put down my coffee and my dog-eared copy of the IMS/DB technical reference manual. I just scrolled through this... analysis... on my grandson's fancy glowing tablet, and I need to set a few things straight for you budding data archaeologists. You're analyzing code commits like you've discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's adorable.
Here's what a real database veteran thinks about your fascinating "raw statistics."
You're celebrating the total lines of code inserted as if it's a measure of progress. Let me tell you something. Back in my day, we wrote COBOL programs that ran the entire financial system of a Fortune 500 company on less code than your average web page's cookie consent pop-up. We had 80 columns on a punch card, and if you needed 81, you re-thought your entire life. What you call "growth," I call code obesity. It's the digital equivalent of putting on 200 pounds and calling it "gaining mass."
Oh, the number of commits! It's just breathtaking. You see a "dynamic and surprising development history." I see a bunch of kids who can't write a function without breaking three other things. We didn't have "commits." We had a change request form, a review board, and a two-week waiting period before your code was allowed anywhere near the mainframe. All your chart shows me is a decade-long game of whack-a-mole with bugs that you introduced yourselves. Bravo on fixing your own mistakes, I guess.
And the unique contributors. A real triumph of the commons. You know what we called a project with hundreds of contributors? A disaster. It's a committee designing a horse and getting a camel with three legs and a web browser. I trusted my data to a team of five guys named Stan, Frank, and Lou. They knew every line of that system, and they could restore the whole thing from a tape backup in a dark data center during a power outage. I wouldn't trust your "community" to look after my pet rock.
By analyzing the total lines of code inserted...we can see a dynamic...development history.
This whole idea of treating source code like a geological dig is just precious. You're celebrating features that are just sad imitations of things we had working on DB2 back in 1985. You kids get all excited about JSON support? Congratulations, you've re-invented the flat file and made it harder to read. You talk about sharding like it's some kind of black magic? We called it "putting the east coast sales data on a separate machine" and it wasn't a blog post, it was just a Tuesday.
Honestly, the most revealing statistic you could pull from that repository is the ratio of "adding shiny new features" to "fixing the catastrophic security flaw we introduced with the last shiny new feature." I guarantee you that graph looks like a hockey stick. We focused on one thing: data integrity. Does the number you put in equal the number you get out, even after the building burns down? Your whole analysis is just digital back-patting while ignoring the fact that the foundation is made of plywood and hope.
Anyway, I've got a backup tape from '92 that's probably degraded into dust. Sounds more productive than this. A real pleasure, I'm sure. I'll be certain to never read this blog again.