Hacker News Reader

Comment by andy_boot | Hacker News Reader

Author here - I'm scrolling thru the logs and it is interesting to see that on the first question lots of people try to write "select name, total_weight" despite there only being a weight column which you have to use an aggregate on to get the total weight.

I guess I need to rethink my design a little.

View on HN

I did that and to be honest I am not quite sure why.

I think it's due to lack of reading the question properly and impatience.

But it also might be due to how programmers sometimes think/work. Often, when I am trying to solve a problem I like writing something (anything) down in broad strokes first so that I can then go back in and 'fix' each smaller part of the larger problem.

The vast majority of developers don't know SQL beyond simple CRUD queries. The surge in popularity of NoSQL over the past decade has made SQL become a lost art. Even when using relational databases, ORMs often alleviate the need for understanding the principles.

Thank you for making this.

Q6 has a flaw. You request "Order by: ranking, name" but the accepted solution sorts by rank only (Alfie should come before Ashes)

I suspect there's a need to keep the design simple, but the source table schema should probably be more prominent. I suspect most people try to guess the names of the columns before they ever click "Show table schema".

Nice quiz, by the way, and I like the topic. In my experience, too few devs / dbas make good use of window functions.

I thought the underlying schema was pretty obvious. However I made lots of mistakes due to trying it out from my phone, and it didn't cooperate as well as one would've liked.

But I think the design was good. I also noticed the option to look at the schema, if needed.

It took me a while to see the 'show schema' link. Maybe this should always be shown.

Quick bit of feedback: question 10 refers to the "WINDOW command" which I think should be called the "WINDOW clause" to help clueless folks (ie me) Google for it.

good idea. I'll fix that.

You had me on the plural for your table names. Have not seen it in a while. Personally believe it is a preference thing.

Despite being the author I think you are correct. It should be table: 'cat' not 'cats'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com