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Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

cs-blog.khanacademy.org

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Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#61

Post by threeseed »

pcurve wrote: post #10
marktangotango wrote: post #6

Imo every developer should be comfortable with sql, upto joins at least. Basic data modelling is also invaluable.

Serious question...what kind of developer can you be without knowing SQL?

Big Data Developers can use Spark, Cascdading or Pig to do pretty advanced data warehouse, analytics, ETL tasks. Web app developers accessing databases can use an ORM e.g. Hibernate to abstract away the SQL layer or use JSON to query MongoDB, CouchDB etc.

You could write every application under the sun without knowing a single bit of SQL.

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#62

Post by tsumnia »

rhc2104 wrote: post #38
tsumnia wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love your site and plan to use it as a teaching tool for my Wed Development course I'm teaching. As a request, are you working on a user system to record completed lessons? As an extension, are you looking into making a classroom management system akin to Codecademy? I'd love to create a classroom, have students log in, complete the necessary lessons and have the means to know where they are in the overall plan. If…

Hi tsumnia, Thanks for the feedback! One nice thing about SQL Teaching is that it is completely client-side . This is possible because somebody compiled SQLite to JavaScript: https://github.com/kripken/sql.js/ Thus, I would have a bias against adding a classroom management system which would require some kind of backend database that I would need to keep running (funny, I know). However, SQL Teaching is open source h…

Not funny at all! Its something that I am toying with on my end as well. I'll have to play with it this summer and let you know if I get anything rolling!

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#63

Post by kremlin »

themartorana wrote: post #43
oalders wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On some level, I think you can still apply the "starts with a vowel" rule for SQL, since in this case "S" is really standing in for "ess" (assuming you're not saying "sequel", which I've never gotten into the habit of doing).

Yes - exactly my point. It is interesting to learn, as another commented somewhere in this thread, that my brain just invokes the appropriate "sequel" vs. S.Q.L. just from whether or not someone includes the ever-so-important "n."

It's not automatic for me, which is why I found it annoying enough to ask. If a writer writes 'an SQL query', that doesn't bother me at all, but if a writer writes 'a SQL query', it takes me a while before I start hearing it in my head as 'a sequel query' -- until then, it just sounds wrong.

Worse is that some writers seem to mix it up, use both periodically.

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#65

Post by marvel_boy »

ufmace wrote: post #57
jndsn402 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to get an understanding of basic SQL without all that overhead, you can try Microsoft Access.

Oh god, no more Access. Access has a weird semi-dialect of SQL where it's insanely picky about how you position parenthesis in multiple join statements. I found it impossible to get a query right without the graphical query generator, and that's after routinely writing 5-10 table joins in T-SQL. No thanks, I'd recommend Sqlite over it anyday for a lightweight database. Works great on command line or in any of dozens…

I agree with the SQLlite recommendation.

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#67

Post by jeffdavis »

rhc2104 wrote: post #60
jeffdavis wrote: post #59

This is great... but I am torn because, as someone who has spent a lot of time with databases, I feel like there are many mistakes that can lead to confusion. First, it's not teaching standard SQL, it appears to be teaching MySQL. That means any user who tries out any other system will immediately run into confusing error messages about the double quotes. Not ideal, and totally unnecessary -- sticking to standard SQL…

Khan Academy is using SQLite (because there is a JavaScript version of it)

Can't they use the standard single quotes then?

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#68

Post by MarcScott »

rhc2104 wrote: post #2

This is great! I created http://sqlteaching.com , so it's wonderful to see Khan Academy's take. If anyone from KA would like to chat with me about SQL tutorials or anything else in general, feel free to reach out- rhc2104@columbia.edu

I used your site recently to help my GCSE students revise for their CS exam. It was perfect, so thanks for all your efforts in creating it.

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#70

Post by AlisdairO »

It's great to see KA getting involved in teaching SQL - I really think there's too little SQL literacy out there amongst devs in general.

I created http://pgexercises.com a while back, which goes up to some relatively tougher exercises. I'd be very happy to help out with KA's effort if it would be useful. Email is in my profile.

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