March 5th, 2019

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.

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@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.

Feel better soon!

thanks!

how are you teaching yourself scheme?

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.

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