Comment by sgarland
7 days ago
Mostly because you don’t know if it’s correct unless you know SQL. It’s entirely too easy to get results that look correct but aren’t, especially when using windowing functions and the like.
But honestly, most queries I’ve ever seen are just simple joins, which shouldn’t take you 5 minutes to write.
> Mostly because you don’t know if it’s correct unless you know SQL. It’s entirely too easy to get results that look correct but aren’t ...
This is the fundamental problem when attempting to use "GenAI" to make program code, SQL or otherwise. All one would have to do is substitute SQL with language/library of choice above and it would be just as applicable.
Fully agree, I just harp on SQL because a. It’s my niche b. It always seems to be a “you can know this, but it doesn’t really matter” thing even for people who regularly interact with RDBMS, and it drives me bonkers.
> most queries I’ve ever seen are just simple joins
Good for you. Some of us deal with more complex queries, even if it may not seems so from the outside. For example getting hierarchical data based on parent_id, while having non-trivial conditions for the parents and the children or product search queries which need to use trigram functions with some ranking, depending on product availability across stores and user preferences.
I agree knowing SQL is still useful, but more for double checking the queries from LLMs than for trying to build queries yourself.
> getting hierarchical data based on parent_id
So, an adjacency list (probably, though there are many alternatives, which are usually better). That’s not complex, that’s a self-join.
> trigram functions
That’s an indexing decision, not a query. It’s also usually a waste: if you’re doing something like looking up a user by email or name, and you don’t want case sensitivity to wreck your plan, then use a case-insensitive collation for that column.
> I agree knowing SQL is still useful, but more for double checking the queries from LLMs
“I agree knowing Python / TypeScript / Golang is still useful, but more for double checking the queries from LLMs.” This sounds utterly absurd, because it is. Why SQL is seen as a nice-to-have instead of its reality - the beating heart of every company - is beyond me.
Your Python / TypeScript etc. argument is a strawman, thats why it sounds absurd. Your arguments would hold better if an average person was good and very quick at learning and memoizing complex new things. I don't know if you work with people like that, but that's definitely not the norm. Even developers know little SQL unless it's their specific focus.
In the original comment you said:
> I guarantee you, anyone who knows any other language could learn enough SQL to do 99% of what they wanted in a couple of hours. Give it a day of intensive study, and you’d know the rest. It’s just not that complicated.
Well your "guarantee" does not hold up. Where I live, every college level developer went through multiple semesters of database courses and yet I don't see these people proficient in SQL. In couple hours? 99% of what they need? Absurd
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