Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

cs-blog.khanacademy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 89 posts

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#31

Post by MichaelGG »

kremlin wrote: post #11

I'm doing the course, as it's something I haven't learned in depth yet. They mentioned pronunciation : 'S-Q-L' vs 'sequel'. I've always pronounced it S-Q-L. The lecturer implies there's no right answer, that 'sequel' is historical but 'S-Q-L' is preferred for international use. The annoying thing, though, is that in writing a choice has to be made. If someone pronounces it 'S-Q-L' then to read 'a SQL query' is weird…

Furthermore, there's the QUEL language, and SQL is probably going off that, especially with the original name of SEQUEL. Here's an interesting post on it: http://patorjk.com/blog/2012/01/26/pronouncing-sql-s-q-l-or-...

FWIW, I use sequel as that's how I learned it. But I also dislike unnecessary syllables so that's my justification.

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#32

Post by oalders »

themartorana wrote: post #19
kremlin wrote: post #11

I'm doing the course, as it's something I haven't learned in depth yet. They mentioned pronunciation : 'S-Q-L' vs 'sequel'. I've always pronounced it S-Q-L. The lecturer implies there's no right answer, that 'sequel' is historical but 'S-Q-L' is preferred for international use. The annoying thing, though, is that in writing a choice has to be made. If someone pronounces it 'S-Q-L' then to read 'a SQL query' is weird…

This is a question for English.StackExchange. http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5265/an-sql-serve... http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1016/do-you-use-a... That said... As a native English speaker, I can infer your pronunciation from which of the options of "a" and "an" you decide to use. FWIW, "an" is appropriate for any word starting with a vowel sound (whether or not it actually starts with a vow…

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).

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#34

Post by havetoregister »

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?

I write mathematical optimization software. I haven't used SQL since my undergrad. I know that one of our teams though use SQLite to store benchmarking results or something.

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#35

Post by tsumnia »

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 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 you'd like some help getting that going, let me know! I'm in the process of developing typing exercises for my courses to give students extra practice with the basics.

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#37

Post by rifung »

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?

Web developers don't have to know SQL if they are only doing front end work, since the routes they hit which may or may not use SQL are written by back end developers.

Actually I'm a back end developer and I don't use SQL at all. I learned it (a bit at least) on my own just out of interest and random personal projects, but I don't use SQL at work at all; we only use DynamoDB.

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#38

Post by rhc2104 »

tsumnia wrote: post #35
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 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 https://github.com/rhc2104/sqlteaching , so I would update the site if you were to add the feature, or you could just take the JavaScript files and integrate it into your site!

Re: Learn SQL Interactively on Khan Academy

#39

Post by peteretep »

ianstallings wrote: post #27
pcurve wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In today's world you could probably be powerful using the NoSQL databases. But , imho, you will still have to understand the basics of set theory. Unions, intersects, etc. But I agree with the spirit of what you're saying. A good programmer will know SQL. It's definitely not going away anytime soon.

SQL has almost no practical overlap with set theory. Relational calculus, and relational algebra, sure, but SQL neither operates on nor produces sets.
Post reply on HN