Are the posted questions getting worse?
- Michael L John wrote:Jeff Moden wrote:Michael L John wrote:
They are not even Excel jockeys. One of them has a LAW degree. she just passed her bar exam and is not going into law. The rest have psychology degrees.
At least the ones with the Law degrees will know what "It Depends" means. 😀
The frustrating thing is that clearly these folks put in the time to get their degrees, and be subject matter experts in their chosen fields of study. The time they spend learning the technology, even the basic concepts, has been minimal. It's not as if they are arrogant sots who think they know it all. It's a good group to work with. There's just this "mental block" or something that prevents them from taking the time to learn the critical things.
Understood. These people are very intelligent but have no intelligence related to their current jobs. You know this as well as I... you must first help them unlearn what they've learned, then (almost simultaneously) excite them about what they can learn and teach them the right way. If you don't both excite them and teach them the right way, they will fail and you will have failed. The "mental block" you speak of is due to the fact that they do not yet know what is possible and so are not yet excited. Both excitement and enjoyment are critical in motivating people to learn. And yeah, it can be really tough to accomplish such motivation... it takes special care by a special person and I know you... you ARE that special person. Who else would run a special track for newbies at the Pittsburgh SQL Saturday year after year and act as the father for 3 grandchildren?
You've always been a teacher, Michaeal... rise to the occasion once more and help people be exceptional.
--Jeff Moden
RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally) -
I hate to bring any political debate into things, but when one talked climate change and implied anyone could learn to code...and completely change careers easily.
My Imagination ran wild with the 100 or so people within our company who when they moved on I was tasked with fixing something of theirs that broke. Building something that is flexible to changing requirements, while giving correct information, is a real skill. Some of the examples I ran across were as bad as the interviewees many of you have run into.
One of my early mentoring experiences was with an Excel Jockey who had some potential. He was fairly good, although he lacked some out of the box thinking. Dynamically splitting data out based on the business units (10, but some days you may only have 8 or 9): and dynamically changing the sizes of named ranges, allowed the report to generated daily. So although he was good, it opened up his eyes to so much more to learn.
I was fortunate enough to have access to several skilled programmers and was able to discuss challenges at a technical level, and then able to add what was needed to create a solution. Forever grateful to the sound advice - had these programmers not been so skilled, I would have struggled.
Law Degree and passed the bar - as you imply, it says something or maybe nothing. If they understand logic, I see hope. Part of what I see is can you talk a language they understand? For example, a visual data base diagram might be something that helps them see the files, the proper joins, and how the files are related (along with those that aren’t). Sending them server names, ports, etc. - maybe showing them how to connect to each in Excel might be helpful.i
One of the things we ran across all the time - the business would talk their language, and the programmer his. Requirements, although documented, had holes (i.e. bugs). that were addressed during dev and qa. But sometimes testing was not thorough enough and these were only discovered in production as more eyes looked at the data. The better the requirements were understood and agreed upon by both parties, the better the final product. Bridging both the technical and the business is part skill, but also art. On both sides.
I remember the discussion between the ERP manager and the data warehouse manager. John - the ERP Manager said I was a loose cannon. Smart, could code, and access to everything. His worst nightmare. Terry DW manager said “exactly why he belongs in IT, so we can give him direction”. I was immediately moved to Terry’s group. John quickly learned why Terry liked what he saw. I was talking to one of his server admins about something I needed, The admin was matching virus scans to servers manually. And complaining how he hated this - their list was static, and servers always being replaced. I built a quick little app in Excel that pulled servers from AD (current and dynamic), imported the weekly scan and matched it up. More accurate, and went from a several hour pain to a couple seconds. Same problem, but someone with a completely different perspective came up with very different solution. Maybe part of it was I was a database guy, and only had to look at the problem. So to me, it only appeared as two data sources, and what are we trying to do.
- Greg Edwards-268690 wrote:
Same problem, but someone with a completely different perspective came up with very different solution. Maybe part of it was I was a database guy, and only had to look at the problem. So to me, it only appeared as two data sources, and what are we trying to do.
This is actually a fairly rare skill, IMHO, especially when it comes to defining requirements. It seems to be common amongst many of the folks here on SSC (including you) but not so much in real life or even on some of the other forums. It first requires one to understand that they're in a box and then both the desire and skill to get out of the box and KISS (Keep It Super Simple) the solution in the process. I also think a lot of people think that flexibility requires a bunch of fancy code when, at least to me, it usually means keeping it as simple as possible... at least in T-SQL and especially when it comes to handling data, which is almost everything we do.
--Jeff Moden
RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally) -
Part of that skill was developed early on in my career. Learning to break down a process into smaller reusable processes, then add a little bit of code to determine when to maybe branch out to adapt to a nuance in the data. Some self taught, some through discussion with programmers and the DW manager. He probably had the greatest influence, as he was the best data architect I have ever known. When I moved into that group full time, he had a similar skill. I was a JDE SME, so having done reports off this, combined with DW information, and back end knowledge of how JDE was setup, I was an end to end wealth of knowledge to be picked when developing new measures and dimensions. Always interesting to me determining where we put a trigger to capture changes. And since we were a lights out nightly refresh, error handling was key. JDE had very little to enforce referential integrity. And some times errors in data entry were not corrected until the next day.
Lots of smart people out there, and learning when and how to ask them the right questions was a big part. The application of this to code developed over time. Learned a lot here too from people like you.
Forever thankful for this site.
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Thanks for the feedback, Greg. I totally agree... this site has been a staple of knowledge for me, as well. I don't believe that I'd have been able to do some of things I've done at work without this wonderful community. Some of the problems that people have posted questions about have ultimately come in real handle. There's no place in the world where you can get such a preponderance of real life problems to solve as practice.
--Jeff Moden
RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally) -
JDE was a mess. I worked there and their philosophy (with 100s of developers on a product) was write crappy SQL once and have it run poorly on every platform. Couldn't get developers to think otherwise, and managers didn't think hiring even 1 person for each platform to tune code would help. Crazy.
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When we were about to go live, we had 2 people run supply demand on the same item at the same time. Locked up the whole environment. Some of the code developed on our site made it into later versions.
We used triggers on the production instance to capture daily changes we were interested in. The coolest part was we never had any issue with new releases. And I can remember one odd instance where finance had a processing option set wrong and released work orders moved back in status. The production crew was mystified for weeks. I had our programmer do a slight modification to our trigger, and we captured the issue the same day.
JDE got me my start into IT after working on the shop floor. As an SME, with limited access to some things, I often got directed to figure out set up bugs. It was rather an interesting cat and mouse game when they restricted security. We worked with Born, and one time when some of the people were leaving, Craig Thielen was back. He mentioned he was back to secure the environment, and I chuckled. He was well aware of my creative flair. So he asked the question what’s so funny? I replied a shop floor user can access the source code in production. He goes no way. Then I describe the function key path to do so. I had a valid reason to be there - comments in the code (and browsing the code itself) expedited bug fixes. I knew who to talk to, and a pretty good understanding of what was helpful. Although RPG is nothing I had actual training in, it was similar enough to the VB / VBA I used.
I remember the pains as they tested One World. The green screen wasn’t so bad. Users complained, but the alternative, although it looked better, had lots of issues.
Once I was asked to do an update world writer in production, as JDE production support was swamped. Simply a field was mixed case and needed to be all upper. Was unable to run it. Security officer said I wasn’t locked out. I figured out how to grant myself access, then told him what he needed to lock down.
Part of what many never had a handle on was few shops ran JDE out of the box, but enhanced code for their needs. Which led to challenges when you upgraded.
WW and Showcase were my launch into report writing. 2 days of WW training and we went live with no reports. The users will tell you what they need. And I was a busy bee. But a tremendous learning experience. Showcase was pretty neat - especially embedded in Excel and tying in macros.
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I know many of us haven't seen Gail in awhile. I was at ZSL London yesterday and believe I found her:
(Sorry Gail if you're reading this, couldn't resist 🙂 )
Thom~
Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk -
on floor laughing... steal that plaque and post it to me.
I can just imagine that as the front bit of a box that contains an instant database that is fully indexed and well written - forget dynamoDB, mongoDB,cosmoDB - we now have "GILADB"
MVDBA
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Ignoring the politics, this is interesting: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/coronavirus-airlines-white-house-tensions/index.html
US govt: we want this data
CEO: We don't have that
US govt: You're lying.
CEO: We can collect it with paper, or build an app in a few months.
That's a simple view, and there are lots of issues, but interesting that this data is the center of a controversy here. I get both sides, but I also get this is something we want to contain and control quickly.
- Steve Jones - SSC Editor wrote:
Ignoring the politics, this is interesting: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/coronavirus-airlines-white-house-tensions/index.html
US govt: we want this data
CEO: We don't have that
US govt: You're lying.
CEO: We can collect it with paper, or build an app in a few months.
That's a simple view, and there are lots of issues, but interesting that this data is the center of a controversy here. I get both sides, but I also get this is something we want to contain and control quickly.
you won't get the data until people are dead... in the UK we have been advised to NOT go to a GP or a hospital or a pharmacy. so how do they collect the data??
if airlines are required to vet passengers and report on that data then it will mean longer checkin times, more delays and frankly since it takes a few days to start showing signs - then it is impossible. - can you imagine climbing onto a plane and getting a temperature test, a breath test and a blood sample??
I coughed today (just man flu - kids on the bus all sneezing) and I was asked if I wanted to work from home (cool boss) , but putting us in isolation won't make us better. - collect the data
end of rant 🙂
MVDBA
- MVDBA (Mike Vessey) wrote:Steve Jones - SSC Editor wrote:
Ignoring the politics, this is interesting: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/coronavirus-airlines-white-house-tensions/index.html
US govt: we want this data
CEO: We don't have that
US govt: You're lying.
CEO: We can collect it with paper, or build an app in a few months.
That's a simple view, and there are lots of issues, but interesting that this data is the center of a controversy here. I get both sides, but I also get this is something we want to contain and control quickly.
you won't get the data until people are dead... in the UK we have been advised to NOT go to a GP or a hospital or a pharmacy. so how do they collect the data??
if airlines are required to vet passengers and report on that data then it will mean longer checkin times, more delays and frankly since it takes a few days to start showing signs - then it is impossible. - can you imagine climbing onto a plane and getting a temperature test, a breath test and a blood sample??
I coughed today (just man flu - kids on the bus all sneezing) and I was asked if I wanted to work from home (cool boss) , but putting us in isolation won't make us better. - collect the data
end of rant 🙂
They may already are collecting the data, but know how it goes when a company defies a government request for data. Just think back to late 2015 and a terrorist's encrypted iPhone. The risk was high and the legal cost could not have been light. Companies collect tons of data all the time - some right, some wrong, but they collect it.
I think the potential irony of the whole mess is that fewer people are flying, so the airlines aren't making as much money. After the fighting in both directions is over, how long before they want a bailout?
- Ed Wagner wrote:
...I think the potential irony of the whole mess is that fewer people are flying, so the airlines aren't making as much money. After the fighting in both directions is over, how long before they want a bailout?
It may be sooner than people think if they keep flying empty planes:
- Chris Harshman wrote:Ed Wagner wrote:
...I think the potential irony of the whole mess is that fewer people are flying, so the airlines aren't making as much money. After the fighting in both directions is over, how long before they want a bailout?
It may be sooner than people think if they keep flying empty planes:
Flybe have already gone bust, but that was already on the cards
but empty aircraft - that's a lot of fuel dumped into the atmosphere - maybe regulators might look at that idea and pay operators to not fly unnecessary flights
I have a microlight licesnse and I fly for fun (npplm(r) license) I use a couple of gallons of fuel per flight (£10) , but I know my little Foxbat is still poluting
MVDBA
- MVDBA (Mike Vessey) wrote:
but empty aircraft - that's a lot of fuel dumped into the atmosphere - maybe regulators might look at that idea and pay operators to not fly unnecessary flights
Last I read the EU has reached out to the Airports about this. The reason they're flying the planes is because of the "use it or lose it" attitude in regards to favourable departure times. If the Flight Company doesn't use the slot, they lose the slot, so to avoid losing it they send the plane out regardless if many (or anyone) are on the plane. Really stupid if you ask me; at least with things that are going on.
Next flight I have (booked) isn't till September though, so hoping things will be calmer by then. If not, and the Home Office advise against flying to Japan at least I get a refund so I'm not worrying about it; not like anything I can do will change things.
Thom~
Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk
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