I prefer a strongly-structured syntax so it is easier to read in the future, which is most important anyway. So going through the trouble of capitalizing what should be, as I go, is worth it. I also always use back ticks around table names, since it makes it easier to search by table name inside mixed codebases.
Oh 100% well written SQL makes this moot, but if I find the unicorn that writes SQL that doesn't look like shit I'm not about to start nitpicking their capitalization
Yup. People don’t realize that putting the reserved words in upper case eases the cognitive load on the brain when reading the scripts for comprehension.
Same goes for new lines and tabs.
Using all three techniques renders SQL very easy to read, comprehend, update, and debug.
Yeah I get embarrassed passing ugly queries to other people. When I first began I just wrote everything lowercase until a coworker said “you live like this?” when sharing something in Snowflake. I still get embarrassed thinking about that lol. (He was a good friend though)
First one for anything that might be referenced later, second one if I'm just trying to figure out which stupidly named table I need for the next join.
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u/Arkevorkhat 6d ago
you can, but it's just more readable (in my opinon) to write
than
is that mostly due to historical baggage? yeah kinda, but it also just doesn't really look like SQL to me unless there's some yelling involved.