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From Hibernate Nightmares to JOOQ Dreams
6 min read5 days ago
The day we realized our ORM was gaslighting us
The Tuesday That Broke My Soul
“Why is this query taking 30 seconds?”
I’m staring at my laptop screen at 11 PM, and our “simple” user dashboard is loading slower than a 2005 YouTube video on dial-up.
The query? Just get users with their orders and some basic filtering.
How hard could it be?
Famous last words.
Hibernate was supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, it was generating SQL that looked like it was written by a drunk octopus having an existential crisis.
SELECT * FROM users u
LEFT JOIN orders o ON u.id = o.user_id
LEFT JOIN order_items oi ON o.id = oi.order_id
LEFT JOIN products p ON oi.product_id = p.id
LEFT JOIN categories c ON p.category_id = c.id
LEFT JOIN subcategories sc ON c.id = sc.category_id
-- ... 47 more joins
WHERE u.active = trueWhat the actual hell, Hibernate?
The Hibernate Honeymoon (That Didn’t Last)
Let me rewind.
Two years ago, we were young, naive, and believed in magic. Hibernate promised us the world:
