I am rapidly approaching a point where work wants me to learn Microsoft SQL, which is sub optimal to me. But my grasp of vanilla SQL is pretty hazy at best. I can kinda grok other peoples queries, and I can setup my own databases & users, manage permissions and point apps at the accounts & databases but thats mostly it.
So im going to make the best of it and try to focus on ANSI SQL for the most part. I don’t think their will be too much Microsoft proprietary stuff ill have to cope with at first, save all the tools they build around interfacing with their SQL & Reporting stuff.
Bright side I can play around with scheme + sql soon.
@trashHeap I had some experience with MSSQL back in 05-08 and back then at least… it was pretty different from ANSI SQL. It leaned heavily on a lot of MSSQL-specific functions and things.
I’m happy to help however I can when you need some SQL. I don’t know many things, but I do consider myself a mid-tier SQL person.
scheme+sql! you have to tell us what that’s like. what of your production code is weitten in scheme?
a few weeks ago i made a worksheet for apprentices to practice the most basic sql commands! now we’re having them use postgres. i have to look up all the sql i write because i’m used to orms.
i am still at home sick! i have a sore throat and i fall asleep at the drop of a hat. drop of a tuna. that’s pretty normal for me but this is even more exhaustion.
I guess this is a good time to learn SQL. The Semantic Mediawiki “Lite-ternative” is Extension:Cargo - MediaWiki and can knowing SQL can assist in writing queries.
Well im going to try and sell my boss on the idea that ill learn some ansi SQL as a foundation and then start learning the minimal amount of proprietary microsoft extensions I can get away with.
Well to be clear, nothing ill do for work is in scheme. I just gotta learn SQL and im learning scheme off the clock. Don’t have any firm plans for it yet.
are you using The Little Schemer? i have a copy of the follow-up, The Seasoned Schemer! i haven’t gone through it yet but i skipped to buying the second book because 1. the person i was living with at the time had the first book and 2. i used scheme in 2000, in cs61a with professor harvey. we inplemented logic for a text-adventure game set mostly on the berkeley campus. the goal was to get to sf chinatown and eat potstickers. the professor brought whoever wanted to go on a potstickers run some saturday toward the end of the semester. i didn’t go but i wish i did. all i remember besides the cars and the cdrs was when you got to telegraph, the game would print out “tie-dye as far as the eye can see…” and i saw that a lot when i was trying to navigate around.
i hear they switched to python a few years ago. i’m a little sad but it makes sense.
anyway tell me if you get to that book and maybe we can check in on progress together! i never really understood wtf the lambda was all about in 2000 (and got really lost when we got to mutexes… mutii? mutices), but after a long break from coding and then eight years doing it professionally i know more things / believe i can figure out stuff sometimes now.
The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs video lectures from MIT Open Courseware and “Sketchy Scheme” by Nils M Holm.
I was using the official textbook for the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs video lectures for a bit; but the continous recursive math example after math example grew a little tiring. Especially as the math examples were appraoching the limits of my memories of semi advanced maths. (My usage of the word limit their was not meant to be a math pun.)
I started the little schemer once before a year or two ago; but didn’t click with the book too well. I plan on revisiting it now that im seeming to grok the fundamentals.
A lot of scheme texts spend a lot of time on recursive philosophy (which I like) but then table things like basic input and output forever. It’s a little irritating in some ways if you know a programming language or two already. I found myself with a lot of scheme resources frustrated I hadn’t graduated to “Hello World” immediately. My memory of the Little Schemer was kinda like that, but its been a few years.
Though honestly video lecture format really was my breakthrough in clicking with the language. Which I honestly am a hair embarassed about. Ive picked up lots of language just by reading dead tree books before. In my brain I ought to be able to pickup a book and just learn it. But c’est la vie.
That and it was incredibly zen. Which I can appreciate but isn’t how I initially grok a language.
But I really wanna get back to it, I think it will be usefull to me now that im over my initial hump with the language.
That sounds like a fun assignment!
Which one the Little Schemer? Or the Seasoned Schemer?
I’ve allready hit my book acquisition quota for March; but ill dial it up for April and we can have scheme book club!
I kinda groc it’s basic applications; but the super magical stuff gets into using lambda calculus to invent other arbitrary programming languages in scheme; and im not close to groking that just yet. I hope to get there at some point though.