On 9/14/21 12:51 PM, Mladen Gogala wrote:
Replies in-line
On 9/14/21 01:51, Guyren Howe wrote:
They are making a decent decision. SQL is a *fucking terrible*
language, which I don’t blame them for not wanting to learn.
Based on what criteria?
The whole industry, programming languages, infrastructure, everything
would have developed differently if relations were a natural,
pleasurable thing to use in any programming language. Like an Array,
or a Hash.
Thee is nothing natural about either relations or arrays and
hashes/dictionaries. Relations are pretty literal implementation of the
basic set theory. Having a decent understanding of the basic set theory
is a condition for understanding SQL. Now, we can discuss whether a
language implementing a mathematical theory is "good" or "bad", whatever
the meaning of "good" or "bad" in the given context. Historically, SQL
is a good fit for the banking business and accounting and that is why it
is still around.
I can see what you are saying. Still as someone that comes from a
biology background and a basic understanding of math I will say SQL has
a broader appeal. All those years of memorizing organism classifications
inadvertently led me to set theory; 'all dogs are animals, not all
animals are dogs'. Also, time spent identifying plants/critters via
dichotomous keys led me to boolean logic. The upshot is that once I got
involved with SQL databases the basics made sense. The details I am
still learning.
--
I'll speak the key, the whole key and nothing but the key, so help me Codd.
Mladen Gogala
Database Consultant
Tel: (347) 321-1217
https://dbwhisperer.wordpress.com
--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@xxxxxxxxxxx
