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Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years

fagnerbrack.com

141–150 of 243 posts

Re: Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years

#141

>The Only Programming Language Built on Mathematics, Not Fashion As a modern array language D4M is the natural successor for SQL [1]. D4M is based on mathematics like SQL, specifically associative array algebra but not relational unlike SQL. It's more generic since can it caters to most modern data abstractions including spreadsheets, database tables, matrices, and graphs [2]. You can achieve 100M database inserts pe…

i'm probably pretty dumb but i don't really get what's so mathematical about sql.

Re: Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years

#142
post #38

I’ve always felt that SQL is somewhat easy to grasp for basic queries, but gets complex and difficult for even moderate to higher complexity use cases. My eyes glaze over when I read long stored procedures that someone else has written. Any recommended resources to go from beginner/beginner-intermediate to advanced?

[dead]

Re: Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years

#144
SQL and Bash/sh/zsh are the only two languages I learned at the start of my career that have stayed consistently useful ever since.

(I never got very good at Bash but just the REPL terminal basics have served me very well.)

Re: Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years

#145
post #30

> If you are a junior developer, “learn SQL properly” is the most valuable 40 hours you can spend. Not a tutorial. Not an ORM. Actual SQL: joins, subqueries, window functions, query plans. That investment pays you back at every job, in every stack, for decades This is the power of low-level reasoning. Today, even for a junior developers, even if they have AI that solves syntax problems, SQL teaches you to reason and…

> Not a tutorial. Not an ORM. Actual SQL ah, this is an Ai article

So AI also thinks people somehow get away only with ORM without understanding SQL?

Funny thing is, that is always argument of „anti ORM” people.

I yet have to see someone actually argue that you don’t need to understand SQL and ORM will suffice in the wild. Then also find devs who can’t do a simple join as joins and index usage is not some black magic and is still required to use ORM properly.

Re: Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years

#146
> "JavaScript and its ecosystem is an environment where browser wars, framework trends, and open-source maintainer preferences reshaped every few years."

In general, I hate frameworks, and not just JavaScript frameworks. Firstly, for the reasons she describes; they do change quite frequently and break stuff. Secondly, I don't see it saving any more time than using several nice libraries. Not only do you have to learn JavaScript, Java, C#, etc. but you have to learn the framework syntax as well. I will, obviously, use a framework at work when I have to, but for my personal projects, I try to "hand roll" as much as I can with vanilla languages.

Re: Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The breakthrough for me was thinking in terms of sets and not in terms of "how would I do this imperatively." If you see SQL where someone wrote a SELECT and is then using a cursor to loop through those results and do other queries, you've found the person who is still thinking imperatively.

A thousand times this. I've resolved performance issues in so many stored procedures written by programmers who don't grasp set theory and reach for the CURSOR early and often. The quote that comes to mind: "His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."

Fascinating.

Re: Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years

#149
post #30

> If you are a junior developer, “learn SQL properly” is the most valuable 40 hours you can spend. Not a tutorial. Not an ORM. Actual SQL: joins, subqueries, window functions, query plans. That investment pays you back at every job, in every stack, for decades This is the power of low-level reasoning. Today, even for a junior developers, even if they have AI that solves syntax problems, SQL teaches you to reason and…

> Not a tutorial. Not an ORM. Actual SQL ah, this is an Ai article

Did you not see the banner image?

Re: Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years

#150
post #30

> If you are a junior developer, “learn SQL properly” is the most valuable 40 hours you can spend. Not a tutorial. Not an ORM. Actual SQL: joins, subqueries, window functions, query plans. That investment pays you back at every job, in every stack, for decades This is the power of low-level reasoning. Today, even for a junior developers, even if they have AI that solves syntax problems, SQL teaches you to reason and…

> Not a tutorial. Not an ORM. Actual SQL ah, this is an Ai article

Can we stop calling specific literary devices as automatically AI?

Yes, LLMs overuse that pattern. But it's a valid rhetorical device used for many , many years by human authors. Quite often too, especially in philosophical writing, and fantasy novels.

I'll give you that it wasn't often used in blogs or tech articles, but LLMs have been around long enough to have influenced human writing in other domains without the entirety of the content itself being LLM generated.

But its called out so often I swear people online will go read some classics and accuse them of being AI generated.

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