I’m in love. I’d pay for this. Thank you.
Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book
51–60 of 121 posts
Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book
#52This 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.
Since there weren't any commercial relational databases available pre-SQL, this is quite true. Codd wrote a couple of query languages before, but they apparently weren't usable by mere mortals. SQL is over 40 years old, and still dominates. The most recent contenders had to position themselves in terms of SQL (NoSQL).
Also interesting how even NoSQL (non relational) Data stores are embracing SQL or some subset or flavouring of it.
Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book
#53It’s a lovely product and you can tell a lot of work went into making this course. But I fail to understand the author’s logic behind “a good course has to be free”. Why though? What’s wrong with creating value (like The OP) and then extracting it from the people that benefit from it? In fact, there’s tons of anecdotal evidence that free MOOCS haven’t faired well in terms of retention precisely because of a lack of a…
Imagine people in low paying jobs who dont have the means to pay - there should be stellar free resources like this for them to grasp things with a solid enough foundation to get onto more complex projects.
Free is great.
Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book
#54Awesome work Kao!! Earlier this year I launched a similar interactive SQL tutorial with similar goals.
https://chartio.com/learn/sql/
With the writeup on why i made it here: https://medium.com/@__dave/why-i-wrote-yet-another-sql-tutor...
Do let me know if there's any collaboration we could do!
Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book
#55One suggestion to make things even more clear than they already are with this paragraph:
>The SQL query may look like an ordinary sentence, but you should view it as three Lego blocks: SELECT FROM executions LIMIT 3. As with Lego, each block has a fixed format and the different blocks have to fit together in particular ways.*
Explain what SQL is.
---
One example for this could be:
SQL means Structured Query Language, and with SQL we can build (structured) questions (query) using a syntax (language). To find what we want in the data, much like we build structures with various Lego bricks, we can use the following statement:
SELECT * FROM executions LIMIT 3
The SQL query may look like an ordinary sentence, but viewed as three Lego blocks, each block has a fixed format and the different blocks have to fit together in particular ways.
---
Just thinking of how to distill it even further...
Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book
#56It’s a lovely product and you can tell a lot of work went into making this course. But I fail to understand the author’s logic behind “a good course has to be free”. Why though? What’s wrong with creating value (like The OP) and then extracting it from the people that benefit from it? In fact, there’s tons of anecdotal evidence that free MOOCS haven’t faired well in terms of retention precisely because of a lack of a…
See this, from one of the authors of one of the best undergraduate textbooks on operating systems:
• The Case for Free Online Books (FOBs): Experiences with "Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces" by Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, http://from-a-to-remzi.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-case-for-fre...
Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book
#57The choice of example database (the death penalty) is terrific. So much more interesting, important and compelling than the usual tired customer/product examples. I'm tired of seeing the implicit assumption around the place that software is just about business. Software should be about more than that.
I'm not the guy for trigger warnings but I find the choice of data unfortunate. There is a big percentage of people I won't recommend the page because of the dataset.
Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book
#58[deleted]
Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book
#59thanks a lot. it's an awesome project. in the introduction it was stated that this project is using Github pages for hosting but i couldn't find the repository address anywhere.
https://github.com/zichongkao/selectstarsql
here is the Github repository in case anyone wants to send PRs or start the project.
Re: Show HN: Select Star SQL, an interactive SQL book
#60This 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.
On PC the alternatives were xBase, FoxPro, Paradox and Access, so it was a no brainer that SQL eventually took over.