“My pistol will perform a SELECT query on a bullet and then use it to perform an INSERT INTO query on your head and truncate your life, you denormalized villain!”
(from review of Gore: Ultimate Soldier by Taylor Bell, 2002)
“An SQL” makes me unreasonably angry, but that’s pretty awesome
Not everyone calls it “sequel” https://learnsql.com/blog/sql-or-sequel/
If you want to be really pedantic, you could argue that Server Query Language (SQL) and Server English QUEry Language (SEQUEL) refers to two different things.
We should just stop naming things tbh
Some people pronounce Graphics Interchange Format Jiff. It does not make it right or social acceptable.
Some of us say hard g GIF, but prefer “ess-cue-ell” for SQL.
The former is an acronym and the latter is an initialism, and for me, that’s what makes the distinction. Anything else is secondary.
ZHAIF 4 LAIF
Choosey developers choose gif (jiff). It was deliberately meant to evoke the peanut butter ad.
I used to like doing interviews where I had the person (collaboratively) code conways game of life in SQL.
You don’t need to recursively write it. But seeing they understand how to translate logic into table based entries, do basic DML via updates (or I had a no dml template that just used the query results), using window functions and aggregates, case when’s, etc. gave a very good overview of their understanding of sql across a lot of features.
I provided the skeleton and the rules, and I’d help them through it. The goal was that it was fun and not horribly stressful, I made it clear I’d provide any answers to questions or functions or syntax they needed (because IRL they’d just google, so I’ll save them the time).
I think most candidates had fun with it.
That interview sounds interesting. I took a few hours to implement Conway’s Game of Life on my microtonal grid project, but doing it over SQL seems challenging at first.
But then again, a table is basically a grid, so … interesting.
If you’re still hiring, I’d love to give it a try :D
I made it clear I’d provide any answers to questions or functions or syntax they needed (because IRL they’d just google, so I’ll save them the time).
That right there is the difference between a shit interviewer and a golden interviewer. And that goes for a lot of technical roles, far too many just throw a “whiteboard” at you and just expect you to figure it out without any outside help, even though it goes against how even experts get things done in the real world :/
There’s nothing worse than killing all momentum and dialogue while you wait for someone stressed out to waste 5 minutes google something and find the right documentation page. It just sucks.
I also made it clear I’d hire people no matter how far they got as long as they communicated their plan and were able to solve problems. It’s not a real task, in real life you message your boss and say you need more time. I’m looking for “would I work with this person” and “what skills do they have, where can they improve, where would they fit on the team”.
You could make good money teaching people how to do a proper interview.
