Nick Kallen
magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Nick Kallen, an early Twitter engineer and author of Arel, writes about Rails, ORMs, caching and software modularity.
What HN saysHN links his 'Why I wrote Arel' post when discussing ORMs, and his cache-money write-up and defense of Java-style abstraction.
15HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
11stories submitted
287story points
14 years agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Why I wrote Arel by Nick Kallen7 people · 61 points · first shared 2010 · 4 comments on HN
- 2Why I love everything you hate about Java4 people · 191 points · first shared 2010 · 93 comments on HN
- 3A New Declarative Caching Library for Rails2 people · 18 points · first shared 2008 · 5 comments on HN
- 4Contest: 2010 Modularity Olympics1 people · 7 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 5Twitter adds filters -- commentary by an early Twitter engineer1 people · 4 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 6The Meaning of Information Technology1 people · 3 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 7Responsible Technology Journalism1 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 8Scaling Rails: Write-Through Cacheing1 people · 1 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
adelevie · 2011-09-17
dhh, tenderlove, wycats: purveyors of an anti pattern!
In all seriousness, I'd love to see a criticism of ORM that takes Arel into account (http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/why-i-wrote-arel… I have yet to see one.
nervechannel · 2011-01-26
As a counterpoint, I like this quote from Twitter's Nick Kallen:
This smacks of the oft-ridiculed Java AbstractFactoryFactoryInterface. But let me put it bluntly: AbstractFactoryFactoryInterface's are how you write real, modular software–not little fart applications.
http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/why-i-love-every…
[N.B. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of truth in the factorial article, it's just you have to know which challenges just need a one-liner function and which require an AbstractFactoryFactoryInterface]
socmoth · 2009-01-15
cache-money is great idea for a plugin. the author has a really good write up of it:
http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/introducing-cach…
mnutt · 2011-07-22
I believe it just uses it under the hood, but I'm not familiar enough with relational algebra (or ARel) to know for sure. Here's a blog post from the author:
http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/why-i-wrote-arel…
swannodette · 2010-11-18
I suggest you read this post and its comments: http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/why-i-wrote-arel…
xentronium · 2010-10-25
It's been a long debate, and yes, it's almost like sequel. Actually, ARel positions itself into the same niche as sequel, i.e. low-level toolkit to build frameworks on.
In my opinion, sequel is an absolute kick-ass sort of thing, it's just that ultra-cool if you have time and will to hack.
Further reading:
http://sequel.heroku.com/2010/02/06/arel-sequel-differences-part-1/
http://sequel.heroku.com/2010/02/10/arel-sequel-differences-part-2/
http://sequel.heroku.com/2010/02/23/the-benefits-without-the-costs/
http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/why-i-wrote-arel… -- note comments bout sequel
jackseviltwin · 2010-02-05
Also a blog post from the author about Arel here:
http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/why-i-wrote-arel…