April 1, 2014 at 4:28 pm
GilaMonster (4/1/2014)
Hey Steve (if you're listening), can I indirectly toss some flames into that WIT editorial comments?
Skiing today, but enjoy.
I decided I can't communicate with those two and I'll stay out of it.
April 1, 2014 at 4:32 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (4/1/2014)
GilaMonster (4/1/2014)
Hey Steve (if you're listening), can I indirectly toss some flames into that WIT editorial comments?Skiing today, but enjoy.
Hehe, permission to throw flames and go to bed... 🙂
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
April 1, 2014 at 4:39 pm
GilaMonster (4/1/2014)
Python
Thanks, Gail.
That's rather an old language, not a new one - I guess you meant new to you, rather than new in itself.
I don't have too much beef with the language, but the way the fans talk about it, you'd think it was about to end poverty and bring about world peace.
I guess it's not too bad, but the hype is excessive. But "not too bad" doesn't mean "good" - for example anything that includes functional programming without tail recursion optimisation is anathema to me (and I'm pretty sure it doesn't include memoisation either, which although probably less important still suggests crap performance). It's a bit of a kitchen sink language, tries to cover many incompatible programming paradigms, but with silliness like the exclusion of first class continuations (which appeared to be a point of principle with the language's inventor) it is impossible to do anything like declarative functional programming and it probably screws up the other paradigms too. But last time I looked at it seriously, instead of just casually, was about 20 years ago, so anything I say about it is either be 20 years out of date or based on skim reading papers or casual conversations, not hard knowledge of where it is today.
Learning it cause I'm bored (nothing to do at work today, meetings tomorrow and thursday, new work next week) and because I'm probably going to be doing some work in google's app engine for a friend, and that's python-based.
Learning new programming languages to relieve the boredom is something I understand extremely well - I've been doing it since the bad old days when learning was from paper because there was no internet. Having a potential use for the language is a nice bonus.:-)
Besides, more languages = more diversity. No learning is wasted.
I couldn't agree more. Have you tried learning Haskell yet? It's definitely fun!
Tom
April 1, 2014 at 4:48 pm
TomThomson (4/1/2014)
GilaMonster (4/1/2014)
PythonThanks, Gail.
That's rather an old language, not a new one - I guess you meant new to you, rather than new in itself.
Indeed.
Besides, more languages = more diversity. No learning is wasted.
I couldn't agree more. Have you tried learning Haskell yet? It's definitely fun!
I haven't. Had a online friend years ago (when newsgroups were still a thing) who acted like Haskell was the second coming. Put me off a bit.
F# is on the to-learn-soon list (for loose definitions of the word 'soon'), so may well take another look at Haskell then
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
April 1, 2014 at 4:55 pm
GilaMonster (4/1/2014)
I don't have too much beef with the language, but the way the fans talk about it, you'd think it was about to end poverty and bring about world peace.
That's just crazy talk. Everyone knows that Git is going to end poverty, bring about world peace and make coffee in the morning.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
April 1, 2014 at 6:25 pm
GilaMonster (4/1/2014)
I haven't. Had a online friend years ago (when newsgroups were still a thing) who acted like Haskell was the second coming. Put me off a bit.F# is on the to-learn-soon list (for loose definitions of the word 'soon'), so may well take another look at Haskell then
I absolutely hate hearing about a language that is the second coming, or the answer to all our problems, or the language that will enable everyone to write bug-free software or anything like that. If anyone ever suggested Haskell was such a language, they were an idiot. Everyone else whose name is on the first Haskell report agreed with me about that. We improve programming languages slowly (but surely) but I believe that we will never have an idiot-proof language - and I haven't yet met a programmer who wasn't sometimes an idiot (that includes myself, btw).
Tom
April 1, 2014 at 8:31 pm
TomThomson (4/1/2014)
GilaMonster (4/1/2014)
I haven't. Had a online friend years ago (when newsgroups were still a thing) who acted like Haskell was the second coming. Put me off a bit.F# is on the to-learn-soon list (for loose definitions of the word 'soon'), so may well take another look at Haskell then
I absolutely hate hearing about a language that is the second coming, or the answer to all our problems, or the language that will enable everyone to write bug-free software or anything like that. If anyone ever suggested Haskell was such a language, they were an idiot. Everyone else whose name is on the first Haskell report agreed with me about that. We improve programming languages slowly (but surely) but I believe that we will never have an idiot-proof language - and I haven't yet met a programmer who wasn't sometimes an idiot (that includes myself, btw).
I have to agree wholeheartedly with Tom here. Some people think that a single language is going to handle web page layout, all facets of data access, multimedia, all cross-browser idiosyncrasies, encryption and even the overall design. It'll do everything with layers of obfuscation but yet write perfect, efficient SQL to query any database platform. By the very design of the language, bugs will be a thing of the past. Of course, we'll never have to patch anything ever again because it'll all be thought of before v1.0 is even released.
I've heard about how Ruby was going to save the world. Now, judging by how many Git ads I receive, the push is on for that to be the next big thing. I think I'll stick with what works well for now.
April 1, 2014 at 9:48 pm
I nominate this as about the most annoying SQL error message I've seen in a long time:
Cannot use the ROLLBACK statement within an INSERT-EXEC statement.
My thought question: Have you ever been told that your query runs too fast?
My advice:
INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?
The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.
Need to UNPIVOT? Why not CROSS APPLY VALUES instead?[/url]
Since random numbers are too important to be left to chance, let's generate some![/url]
Learn to understand recursive CTEs by example.[/url]
[url url=http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/St
April 1, 2014 at 11:09 pm
TomThomson (4/1/2014)
GilaMonster (4/1/2014)
I haven't. Had a online friend years ago (when newsgroups were still a thing) who acted like Haskell was the second coming. Put me off a bit.F# is on the to-learn-soon list (for loose definitions of the word 'soon'), so may well take another look at Haskell then
I absolutely hate hearing about a language that is the second coming, or the answer to all our problems, or the language that will enable everyone to write bug-free software or anything like that. If anyone ever suggested Haskell was such a language, they were an idiot. Everyone else whose name is on the first Haskell report agreed with me about that. We improve programming languages slowly (but surely) but I believe that we will never have an idiot-proof language - and I haven't yet met a programmer who wasn't sometimes an idiot (that includes myself, btw).
One of my favorite sayings is "If something is idiot proof, only idiots will use it". 😀
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
April 2, 2014 at 2:36 am
I worked with one dev, when I did a bit dev, pity I don't do as mush I as I'd, we still use ON ERROR GOTO don't we?
Anyway it was in VB.Net and I introduced him to TRY CATCH FINALLY.
Only the CATCH just did a response.write to the page, so no real handling of the error. Only in a slightly lighter white than the page background. You probably have guessed where this is going...
He was on holiday and we were getting calls saying data wasn't being saved. So I had a look, sat with the user for 10 - 15 minutes and it just so happened that the light caught the monitor at the right angle that I could see something at the top of the page. So I tilted the monitor and sure enough could see the error message. :exclamationmark:
So basically every other record wasn't being inserted into the database.
Took me about a day first of change the catch to give meaningful messages than I could see, and then to correct the error. He was full of sunshine when he came back until we had a chat. Our boss both managed to see the funny side and take him down a peg or two!
Rodders...
April 2, 2014 at 3:13 am
Python? Isn't that the one where the amount of whitespace at the start of each line is part of the syntax of the language? Never even liked the sound of that...it would force me to lay things out in the way decreed by the authors of the language, not how I prefer things to be.
April 2, 2014 at 3:20 am
paul.knibbs (4/2/2014)
Python? Isn't that the one where the amount of whitespace at the start of each line is part of the syntax of the language? Never even liked the sound of that...it would force me to lay things out in the way decreed by the authors of the language, not how I prefer things to be.
If that is true, it's one of the stupidest things I have heard in a long time.
Python is on the to learn list, next to R. Haven't gotten around to it yet.
Need an answer? No, you need a question
My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP
April 2, 2014 at 5:52 am
paul.knibbs (4/2/2014)
Python? Isn't that the one where the amount of whitespace at the start of each line is part of the syntax of the language?
Yes, indeed. The indentation determines which statements are part or not part of a for/if/while statement. The way you end such a statement is with a blank line.
So, something like this
i = 0
while i <= 10:
i+=1
if i//2 = 0:
print (i)
print ("After loop end")
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
April 2, 2014 at 6:04 am
And that's supposed to be somehow clearer than having explicit block start and end terminators? :blink:
April 2, 2014 at 6:13 am
Readability is crucial
Beautiful is better than ugly
Simple is better than complex
It's better because now you don't have all those unnecessary starting and ending characters, and you'll avoid the arguments about where to place those brackets.
😉
That said, I can't figure out how (or if it's possible) to have another statement in the loop after the IF ends
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
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