The Inner-Platform Effect (2006)

I've made the mistake of creating this kind of problem many moons ago. The dream was to have non-technical domain experts implement the product. I did not know at the time that this was a cursed problem. Probably one of the most cursed, in fact.

Putting it my sql based scripting engine took 2 weeks. Backing it out is going on 4 years now. Perhaps the biggest technical misstep I've ever made. It's kind of like Pandora's box because once the non technical people feel the speed/control, they'll never let it go. You could place a literal money printer on their desk as an alternative and they'd reject it if you took their new power away.

Reminds me a lot of a final year group software project at uni. Instead of building a solution for our client we built a kind of meta solution, then ran out of time to actually solve his problem in it.

From time to time I send this article at my job. Just as a distress call about our system.

I've seen these custom fields tables in a number of database schemas I've worked with in the past. It adds dynamism to a fixed table structure. I wonder how CRMs do it these days without having poor performance at scale?

It's 2025 why are you gluing SQL strings? Don't even use it as an example!