SQL queries don't start with SELECT (2019) | Hacker News Reader

SQL queries don't start with SELECT (2019)

jvns.ca

34 pointsTomte12 comments

Unsolicited career advice for juniors: read a SQL book over a weekend and read a book about the DBMS your job is using on the next weekend. You’ll be very surprised by how much senior folks don’t know or worse about databases.

This is fantastic advice. At the first startup I worked at, we had several issues with our MySQL dbs & ETL jobs (MyISAM table locks, slow updates, no replication) - I spent a few days just reading the relevant sections of "High Performance MySQL: Optimization, Backups, Replication, and More" - and voila I had solid recommendations built on facts rather than random opinions people created over the years - put my career on an entirely different trajectory.

Exactly what I had in mind, I've seen this first hand a couple times. It's a few days of reading which literally can change your life.

Ideally, also invest some time and work through the CMU Intro to Database Systems course by Andy Pavlo.

That's how I would have started if I had to start from scratch

Further advice about life: read, ask questions, dig deeper. You'll be very surprised how many people don't know the basics of anything.

DuckDB sql let's you do from first (thank god)

from first is correct, and way more ergonomic

indeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Integrated_Query got this right, as in fact you do need to see the from clause first for the IDE to be able to suggest what to put in the from clause...

Nowadays with IDEs with auto complete. When SQL was developed it was easier if a query reflects natural language.

Makes me think of PRQL: https://prql-lang.org/

I always found the idea of written SQL making you specify what you want to select before you know what you're selecting from odd.

Discussed at the time:

SQL queries don't start with SELECT - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21150606 - Oct 2019 (253 comments)

a great resource for mysql: https://web.archive.org/web/20130218113554/http://www.artful...

Wouldn't it be impossible to start with SELECT before the FROM and JOIN?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com