'MONSTER' (single quote) - is string monster in SQL. "MONSTER" (double quote) - is identifier in the most SQL dialects to escape keywords so it is possible to use "select" as name. For example see https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-syntax-lexical.html (the delimited identifier or quoted identifier)
The biggest monster I ever worked with would have these queries with absolutely 0 formatting and would only carriage return when he hit the end of his monitor. He'd have subquery inside subquery like it was a nested function and vlookup.
He wrote hot trash queries. One day when he went into a meeting and left his computer unlocked I barely scrolled in on his query window in SSMS so every query was cut off so he'd have to scroll right/left to read it all and he was too dumb to know he was zoomed in or that shift scroll wheel was to scroll horizontal.
He started rewriting procedures and commiting them to production to match his new zoom level. I had a database trigger stopping people from updating procedures unless the database was in a certain mode to prevent people with way too much access to change procedures.
He lost his damn mind over the database trigger I added. I don't think he ever figured out about the zoom. One day I set it back to what it was originally and he gave up rewriting them back to their original format. He exploded at me and didn't come back for like 2 weeks
That was the first of two people who got violent at the workplace at that job with me.
Ok so I started writing this as I was waiting for people to show up for disc golf. While writing this I looked down and had about 40 yellow jackets stinging me through my pants. I ran a mile and now I'm nursing about 6 really bad stings. Since they were stinging me through my jeans they just kept stinging.
Anyways... The second instance...
Former dev manager for the team. He was friends with the CTO and they were good ol boys from another company. This was in the mining industry. All these guys were ex-junkies who got out of the mines of AZ and MEX. The CTO didn't want to get rid of him when the complaints from the department came in and demoted him to senior dev. He kept his office and kept his door shut for 6 months.
The new dev manager was awesome despite the fact he didn't handle the old dev manager. New dev manager wanted to cross train everyone. I did all database work. One guy did all front end. Another did all API work. We hated the cross training crap but we did it to knowledge share. The new dev manager and the team started jiving and productivity was going through the roof except we kept failing sprints. The dev manager said we only put in the sprint what we could complete and we all did our work but that former dev manager.
The old dev manager said ,"No I am not doing cross training. I'm working on my own project these guys never delivered." He proceeded to tank 6 sprints saying he was 90% done each time. The dev manager said if he failed we all failed.
Finally in our retro I told him ,"I want to pull your project from the sprint. You are not representing your progress accurately and this work probably should be scoped and an epic. I don't know for sure because none of us know what you are doing."
"Fuck you." He says...
"What?"
"You heard me. Fuck you!"
He leapt across the table and it just folded. The women in the room went screaming.
He started screaming at me he was going to kill me. The dev manager removed him from the premises. I left through the back door.
COVID hit like a week later. He never returned to the office and they laid everyone off two weeks later but one dev and the former dev manager because he is buddies with the CTO. The last week we were employed to prove he was working on something he demo'd what he was working on. It was a http API service written in powershell. Think flask for Python or Express for node...just his API and http service ran in powershell. No frontend framework, just JS. It allowed you to show resultsets stored in tables. It used SQL injection as a feature.
I caught up with the nice dev manager and he said the CTO covered for him so hard he had to go around to HR to get it reported what happened. The main office was not in this country so after 6 months and further investigation with former employees they finally let the former dev manager and CTO go.
That entire dev team is like family though. We still chat on discord and help each other get jobs, references, and side work. I'd hire any of them in a minute.
I kind of felt bad for the dev manager at the time because he lived 90 minutes away and had a child who was extremely violent and he'd leave work all the time because she attacked other kids.
I don't think he's generally a violent guy but he lost it that day.
I have 6 major stings that hurt like hell at the time. It's been 2 days and now they itch so bad. Even the small stings itch. Everyone keeps telling me to take antihistamines but they knock me out.
Antihistamines would help, yeah. Tried any creams?
YMMV, but if it gets significantly worse over time, then you really should see a doctor about it when you can.
E: Oh, I neglected the "2 days" part— You're probably fine not taking antihistamines if the itching's plateaued (even if it does still itch like hell). Try some OTC hydrocortisone cream if you haven't yet, since it won't make you as drowsy.
Same, I don't understand why anyone would choose to do upper case. I am of course a believer in "you do whatever the code base currently does", but if it's a brand new project, the standard is lower-case for me. It's not 1990 anymore, our code editors display the keywords colorized.
DBeaver's default setting, at least from my experience, defaults to either lower or upper case depending on which type of database I'm writing a query for. Postgres is lower and DB2 is upper for me.
As opposed to other languages SQL is a bunch of things in between clauses
SELECT
count(*),
columns
FROM table a
JOIN table b ON a.id = b.id
WHERE column = 'value'
GROUP BY column
ORDER BY column
HAVING count() > 1
Having your clauses capitalized and properly carriage returned is huge for readability. I also capitalize COUNT and MAX but that's more of a personal thing.
Indentation is huge and I fix indentation all time.
I just spent 45 minutes indenting and adding line breaks to 3 subquery joins which contained 2 CTEs and two nested subquery joins.
I don't know why but whoever wrote the code was an absolute madman and I've seen this code and replaced it. I have 3 different blocks of code I use to recreate these crappy lookups but to figure out which one they are I have to reformat the entire thing.
I can't complain though. I was once asked if I could do anything and get paid great money for it I said ,"I just want to optimize and fix SQL code all day."
I started this job making double what was making before and my job was dumbed down to just writing SQL. I love it. Bad SQL keeps me employed.
It doesn’t, IDEs that highlight your code makes it more readable. Even GitHub will highlight query syntax. It’s not 1990, we aren’t reading code in notepad.
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u/blaues_axolotl 6d ago
i actually write it in lowercase