> Singular models, plural table names. Built in rules to pluralize, or override the defaults and add your own table name.
Why spend a single cycle of computing time on this? There's nothing objectively necessary about it, singular-only is entirely adequate to convey the important semantics. Every single symbol in any code devoted to this conversion unnecessary surface area / computation time that contributes nothing to the problem domain.
> I now understand that the author is referring to the relational algebra side of things here. I don't think that changes my skepticism of the argument though, because very rarely is it useful to discuss these things in terms of the mathemetics with your coworkers.
You don't even have to go that far. It's the user table. The order table. People know what an order is, and what a table in a database is; the semantics of db-table-ness conveys that it's a collection and the nature of the collection with so much more precision than english plurals that it's more likely obscuring to use those than contributing to understanding... much like a lot of natural language conventions, the emulation of which is really the only reason anybody does this.
But also, when we're talking about databases, relational algebra should no more be weird or inadmissible than boolean logic concepts are to coding.
Why spend a single cycle of computing time on this? There's nothing objectively necessary about it, singular-only is entirely adequate to convey the important semantics. Every single symbol in any code devoted to this conversion unnecessary surface area / computation time that contributes nothing to the problem domain.
> I now understand that the author is referring to the relational algebra side of things here. I don't think that changes my skepticism of the argument though, because very rarely is it useful to discuss these things in terms of the mathemetics with your coworkers.
You don't even have to go that far. It's the user table. The order table. People know what an order is, and what a table in a database is; the semantics of db-table-ness conveys that it's a collection and the nature of the collection with so much more precision than english plurals that it's more likely obscuring to use those than contributing to understanding... much like a lot of natural language conventions, the emulation of which is really the only reason anybody does this.
But also, when we're talking about databases, relational algebra should no more be weird or inadmissible than boolean logic concepts are to coding.