Live data from Hacker News

MySQL for Developers

planetscale.com

61–70 of 119 posts

Re: MySQL for Developers

#64
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of SQL they are different technologies. MySQL mingles its custom language with SQL which is a common point of confusion... Whom amongst us wasn't confused when "DESCRIBE" didn't work in SQLite or Postgres?

Are they really different technologies? It has always been my impression that they are the same tech, but they have a slightly different syntax in some places (DESCRIBE) and different levels of capabilities (Postgres offers more). If you know the core concepts of one, you are probably 80% good to go with the other.

> Are they really different technologies?

Yes, your impression is wrong.

Re: MySQL for Developers

#65
post #60

This is very well done Aaron. I'm curious how long did it take you to create this from start to finish?

Thank you! I shared a little about the process on twitter here: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1638191349261377539 . Start to finish... a long, long time. 18 months on and off, 4 months full time. I started this before I was employed at PlanetScale and when I joined PS the course came along with me. I wouldn't have had the space to do it if it hadn't been my full time job. For the past four months or so I'v…

I've taught courses on SQL to newbies and learned a lot from it.

My rule for the slide deck was "don't use a term you haven't explained". So I'd write a slide and check for new words. If I really needed them I'd have to add a slide before that introduced and explained the term.

Figuring out exercises that got students oriented to the concepts was another trick. People really don't get stuff until they've done it for themselves.

By the end of the second day I had people writing joins on their own.

Re: MySQL for Developers

#67

Cool! Now we need this for Postgres.

I’ve been using MySQL. Is Postgres so different now that the SQL here won’t work? (It may be that it’s MYSQL that’s different) I know there are some differences in SQL syntax, but in my case we use pretty basic sql…

[deleted]

Re: MySQL for Developers

#68
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of SQL they are different technologies. MySQL mingles its custom language with SQL which is a common point of confusion... Whom amongst us wasn't confused when "DESCRIBE" didn't work in SQLite or Postgres?

Are they really different technologies? It has always been my impression that they are the same tech, but they have a slightly different syntax in some places (DESCRIBE) and different levels of capabilities (Postgres offers more). If you know the core concepts of one, you are probably 80% good to go with the other.

[deleted]

Re: MySQL for Developers

#70
A lot of devs should really be more familiar with plain ol' SQL databases. I've been at multiple companies where people have jumped to elaborate, gigantic, overcomplicated projects preemptively designed to scale to ten billion people, that could have instead been driven entirely by a single big MySQL or Postgres database set up in a day or two instead of a month.
Post reply on HN