Re: Some Laws

From: Lemming <thiswillbounce_at_bumblbee.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2004 02:42:48 +0100
Message-ID: <lhurl0t4ss4946g0bg5sjj7275efg9kv5c_at_4ax.com>


On 1 Oct 2004 06:25:28 -0700, jcelko212_at_earthlink.net (--CELKO--) wrote:

>>> to quote Alan Perlis, "A language that doesn't affect the way you
>think about programming is not worth knowing." OO programming isn't
>like plain procedural. It just isn't. It took me long hard years of
>work, frankly, to really "get it." <<
>
>I tell people the same thing about SQL and thinking in sets. At least
>a year of full time work seems to be required to "get it" from what I
>have seen. Of course, the newbies do not want to hear that they are
>doing it wrong and reply with wonderful things like "If you cannot
>tell me how to do it, then shut up, you stupid dipweed!"

When I first met SQL I took to it like a duck to water. I put this down not to any great genius on my part, but on the fact that some years before I had been programming PLCs in Ladder. On the face of it, Ladder and SQL are very different; But the basis of the two is the same: conceptually you have the whole "statement" executing all parts at once.

However: There is very definitely a "road to Damascus" when dealing with SQL/RDMSs; I am working with a very experienced colleague at the moment who is adamant that he's better off extracting data from the database into (denormalised) flat files because "C++ lets him manipulate the data better" and it's "too difficult to get at the data while it's still in Oracle". Once you learn to stop thinking procedurally, SQL becomes the answer to the question you didn't know enough to ask.

Lemming

-- 
Curiosity *may* have killed Schrodinger's cat.
Received on Sat Oct 02 2004 - 03:42:48 CEST

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