Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Are the posted questions getting worse?

May 15, 2023 at 9:49 am

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Dennis Jensen SSChasing Mays Points: 604 More actions · Answer 1

Yeah -- the old adage I share with folks in any industry is -- if you are not constantly learning then you are stuck in a rut and the only difference between a rut and a grave are their dimensions as they both contain dead minds.

Lynn Pettis SSC Guru Points: 442467 More actions · Answer 2

Jeff Moden wrote:

I love the knee-brace analogy.
I don't like the idea of an automatic code debugger. It would be misused in the same fashion. A lot of people are just too lazy or ignorant (ok... I really mean stupid and self-centered 😀 ) to do any learning on their own. It's amazing that we're in an industry were the employee insists that it's only on the company's dime'n'time that they'll take the time to learn.

Many years ago I actually believed that the company should pay for training to advance my career. Then I was given some advice by a salesperson at the company I was working at and he said that if I was working 40 hours a week I should put in 4 to 8 hours a week outside of work learning new things. At the time I really couldn't afford to do that, this was before the internet exploded and YouTube.

Just a few years later I was able to buy a decent computer for home and I started spending time outside of work learning. What a game changer for me. And then in 2005 when I became active in sqlservercentral.com, my learning exploded even more due the heavy hitters on the forums at the time, most notably one Jeff Moden.

Then the unthinkable happened, not exactly sure when, but I started helping people on sqlservercentral.com and I hit the explosive surge in learning. Want to learn something new, teach it.

Even today I keep trying to make time to learn new things. Sometimes I make the time, other times life gets in the way. But yes, we are ultimately responsible for our own growth. If you show your work that you are willing to put your own time and energy into learning, they may find the money and time to help you out as well.

This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by Lynn Pettis.
This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by Lynn Pettis.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004363 More actions · Answer 3

I'm humbled, Lynn. Thank you for the honorable mention. Coming from someone like you and with your knowledge, that's quite the compliment.

--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)

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736270 More actions · Answer 4

Had a request for a large schema from a developer. Wondering if anyone has a large (number of objects) schema that they can send to me for private use. This won't be used publicly, more of a research project for someone that is trying to trace through FKs, or find them.

If you don't have many FKs declared that would be great. If you have some small data that you can include that isn't PII, even better. PM or email (sjones@ this domain).

below86 SSChampion Points: 11532 More actions · Answer 5

Jeff Moden wrote:

I love the knee-brace analogy.
I don't like the idea of an automatic code debugger. It would be misused in the same fashion. A lot of people are just too lazy or ignorant (ok... I really mean stupid and self-centered 😀 ) to do any learning on their own. It's amazing that we're in an industry were the employee insists that it's only on the company's dime'n'time that they'll take the time to learn.

Oops... I fall into that category. But then again I'm one that if I'm not using what I learn I tend to loose a lot of what I learned. It's happened even on the companies dime. A few years ago, at the start of 2020, the company had us learn a tool that was to help do some balancing between sources. I haven't used it, so I don't think I would know to do even in a simple project.

-------------------------------------------------------------
we travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us
Don't fear failure, fear regret.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004363 More actions · Answer 6

@below86 ,

Looking at what you said, I can really sympathize. To be sure, my comments were based on people that were actually hired to work with T-SQL day in and day out. They shouldn't need a debugger.

For "casual" users, I'd like to ask the company why they have casual users writing SQL. But, then I came down with a serious case of "get real" and I can see where such casual users would benefit from the debugger.

--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)

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004363 More actions · Answer 7

Shifting gears a bit...

I ran across an article that had the following statement in it...

"Learning SQL helps us to communicate with databases, but when it comes to cleaning, manipulating, analyzing, and visualizing data, you’ve got to know a bit of Python or R."

I asked the author why they thought SQL couldn't be used to do any of those things. The author said the statement isn't saying that and didn't understand how I came to such a conclusion.

So, I have to ask you good folks two questions, please...

As someone that uses SQL, what was your FIRST impression when you read that statement?
Putting yourself in the place of someone mostly brand new to the world of data analysis with less than, say 20 hours of training in each of SQL, Python, and R, what would your FIRST impression likely be?

--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)

Eirikur Eiriksson SSC Guru Points: 182912 More actions · Answer 8

Jeff Moden wrote:

why they thought SQL couldn't be used to do any of those things.

He he, first guess is that they don't know how to!

😎

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004363 More actions · Answer 9

Eirikur Eiriksson wrote:

Jeff Moden wrote:
why they thought SQL couldn't be used to do any of those things.
He he, first guess is that they don't know how to! 😎

Thanks, Eirikur. I appreciate the response.

So, and just confirming and regardless of possible reasons why, your real first impression was the same as mine in that they're saying that SQL can't do the things cited in their statement, correct?

--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)

Dennis Jensen SSChasing Mays Points: 604 More actions · Answer 10

Jeff Moden wrote:

"Learning SQL helps us to communicate with databases, but when it comes to cleaning, manipulating, analyzing, and visualizing data, you’ve got to know a bit of Python or R."

Okay let us simply dissect what this says and does not say:

1) Learning SQL helps us to communicate with database

Okay that is pretty straight forward and correct no ambiguities there, however that is followed by a very key word

2) but

This is a conjunction that connects two concepts that contrast with one another. Used in this sentence it strongly implies that the former is negated by the latter.

3) when it comes to cleaning, manipulating, analyzing, and visualizing data, you have got to know a bit of Python or R.

Okay there is no other way to interpret this other than it is saying that you "have got to know" or basically "it is required that you know" or "you must know" which then strongly implies that you must use these and going back to the "but" means you are required to use these instead of SQL for the items denoted.

Thus if the author intended to communicate something else, which I will not say is not the case, they utterly failed in doing so. As I cannot see how anyone that even half understands the English language would interpret that sentence in any other fashion.

That being said I would have nicely pointed out to the author that their claim was utterly false, and when they came back with that statement I would have suggested that they learn how to properly use English as that is not what their sentence communicates based on how it is phrased.

This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by Dennis Jensen.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004363 More actions · Answer 11

Thanks, Dennis... that was my exact first impression and for the very reason you stated... The word "but".

How about the rest of you good folks... did anyone else have a FIRST impression that differed from mine?

--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)

Phil Parkin SSC Guru Points: 246965 More actions · Answer 12

Jeff Moden wrote:

Thanks, Dennis... that was my exact first impression and for the very reason you stated... The word "but".
How about the rest of you good folks... did anyone else have a FIRST impression that differed from mine?

First, second and third impressions are the same: "It is impossible to clean, manipulate, analyse and visualise data without knowing some R or Python."

The corollary being that SQL cannot do all of those things.

At a stretch, it could be argued that SQL cannot be used to visualise data and therefore the above statement is true, because one of {clean, manipulate, analyse, visualise} is false, even though {clean, manipulate, analyse} would all be true.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
- Martin Rees
The absence of consumable DDL, sample data and desired results is, however, evidence of the absence of my response
- Phil Parkin

Jonathan AC Roberts SSCoach Points: 18356 More actions · Answer 13

SQL would be my first choice for cleaning data, while it's a powerful tool for querying and cleaning data, it may not be the best choice for performing complex language analysis tasks like sentiment analysis. I was reading about someone who was analysing data on Twitter, they had to make a decision the positivity of comments, a statement like "yes, it was great" within a comment could be either genuine or sarcastic. Sentiment analysis involves determining the sentiment or emotion expressed in a piece of text, it often requires natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyse the context, sentiment words, phrases, and other linguistic features. So for this case Python or R would be a good choice to integrate with SQL for cleaning data.

below86 SSChampion Points: 11532 More actions · Answer 14

Jeff Moden wrote:

Thanks, Dennis... that was my exact first impression and for the very reason you stated... The word "but".
How about the rest of you good folks... did anyone else have a FIRST impression that differed from mine?

My first impression was the same you had Jeff. I know nothing of Python or R and I can do everything I need with SQL. Ok a little SSRS for reports, but that's mainly SQL anyway. 100% agree with Phil statement as well.

-------------------------------------------------------------
we travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us
Don't fear failure, fear regret.