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Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book

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Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book

#21

Post by setr »

wvenable wrote: post #13
dm8 wrote: post #11

This is good intiative. We need to simplify pedagogy. On a related note, I always found the syntax of SQL to be great. Someone told me that simplicity of SQL made relational databases even more popular. It is one of the best designed language where even someone new to the field won't feel intimidated. I'm surprised designers of SQL haven't won the Turing Award yet.

I teach SQL to financial people and, for the most part, it isn't too bad. When I get to joins, I teach a subset of SQL where all joins are done through INNER JOIN / LEFT JOIN syntax and that helps a lot. Joins are the part that everyone has trouble with.

Tbh I usually see teachers worried about joins but its the group by/having clauses that I always watched people struggle with (at least, writing it).

Ofc that might just be the emphasis on joins makes group by the next lowest hanging fruit

Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book

#22

Post by setr »

Cyph0n wrote: post #15
Hendrikto wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> name another programming language that is as valuable today as it was 20 years ago, if not moreso * C * Python * Java 20 years ago was 1998.

C I agree with. But Java and Python? Both languages have changed beyond recognition over the past 20 years. A programmer who hasn't touched either for 20 years would probably be overwhelmed. Another difference is that even though SQL has changed, there isn't much you need to know outside of the DBMS you are using. With Java and Python on the other hand, you need to keep up with the changing library landscape to stay…

>With Java and Python on the other hand, you need to keep up with the changing library landscape to stay relevant.

For C, its just library management is troublesome enough that you end up writing your own ;)

Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book

#23

Post by paulrd »

zckao wrote: post #18
dawie wrote: post #4

I really like your explanations. I have never been able to wrap my head around joins. You say that: "Programming is best learned by doing", but I am struggling to do anything... It would be great if there was some online area like SQL Fiddle with the data loaded, so I can run queries and see results in my browser without having to set anything up or am I missing something.

All the blue boxes are actually interactive code editors. You can run arbitrary queries against the dataset in them. I changed some of the wording to make it clearer. Hopefully that helps!

I was wondering what you were talking about. What blue boxes? Then I saw the problem. The boxes showed up in Chromium but not Firefox.

Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book

#24

Post by kbenson »

Cyph0n wrote: post #15
Hendrikto wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> name another programming language that is as valuable today as it was 20 years ago, if not moreso * C * Python * Java 20 years ago was 1998.

C I agree with. But Java and Python? Both languages have changed beyond recognition over the past 20 years. A programmer who hasn't touched either for 20 years would probably be overwhelmed. Another difference is that even though SQL has changed, there isn't much you need to know outside of the DBMS you are using. With Java and Python on the other hand, you need to keep up with the changing library landscape to stay…

Perl. And no, that's not just a factor of its current popularity, as the language has evolved and has regular releases.

Perl has amazing backwards compatibility, but has also solidified on much better coding practices and libraries in the last 20 years. You can still run that code from 20 years ago with a new interpreter and it will be safer and faster, or you can choose a more modern style or library and it will work just as well.

And to forestall anyone trying to bring up Perl 6 as a counterargument, unless you actually know what it is and how it interacts with Perl 5 and the community, I doubt the argument is actually saying what you think...

Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book

#26

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

dawie wrote: post #4

I really like your explanations. I have never been able to wrap my head around joins. You say that: "Programming is best learned by doing", but I am struggling to do anything... It would be great if there was some online area like SQL Fiddle with the data loaded, so I can run queries and see results in my browser without having to set anything up or am I missing something.

One option is to learn on bigquery (a google cloud service) - its "pre-loaded" with all kinds of public datasets that you can just start querying, with a web interface for doing sql.

Its pretty easy to stay within the free tier (1TB of data per month)

Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book

#27

Post by [deleted] »

setr wrote: post #21
wvenable wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I teach SQL to financial people and, for the most part, it isn't too bad. When I get to joins, I teach a subset of SQL where all joins are done through INNER JOIN / LEFT JOIN syntax and that helps a lot. Joins are the part that everyone has trouble with.

Tbh I usually see teachers worried about joins but its the group by/having clauses that I always watched people struggle with (at least, writing it). Ofc that might just be the emphasis on joins makes group by the next lowest hanging fruit

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book

#28

Post by S_A_P »

I really like this. Bookmarked. I have spotted a few bugs that you may want to check into.

Search the page for the word “llanguage”. The sum/count checker told me it was incorrect for using lowercase nulls. I normally write all my sql lowercase for brevity, but I also mostly use sql server.

I really like what you have done here and I hesitate to report it in your show hn thread because this really is great.

Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book

#29

Post by chris_wot »

S_A_P wrote: post #28

I really like this. Bookmarked. I have spotted a few bugs that you may want to check into. Search the page for the word “llanguage”. The sum/count checker told me it was incorrect for using lowercase nulls. I normally write all my sql lowercase for brevity, but I also mostly use sql server. I really like what you have done here and I hesitate to report it in your show hn thread because this really is great.

Constructive criticism and commentary is one of the most valuable parts of Show HN!
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