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Comment by jkubicek | Hacker News Reader

I've stopped using aliases in the SQL I write and it's dramatically increased the clarify.

From this style guide, the aliases section would look like this in my style guide:

    SELECT first_name
    FROM staff
    JOIN students
      ON students.mentor_id = staff.staff_num;

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If the table names are all short one word like that, they are already basically aliases. What do you do when you end up on some legacy project (you did not make the schema) where_the_table_names_look_like_this? Seems some sort of alias might be more appropriate. Also, when you are writing longer / sub queries or using Common Table Expressions it’s impossible to not use an alias.

Actually, what I should have said was, "I've stopped using alias by default for every table reference".

I'm not opposed to aliases, it's just no longer something I do by default.

Agree. In my experience people use aliases to use aliases. They know them but don't understand them.

Aliases are the SQL equivalent of ternary operators. Are you trying to write clean code or are you trying to express to other people you know things?

How do you know which table first_name came from?

Also aliasing can be as much for legibility as anything.

  SELECT
      ZZ.first_name
  FROM staff AS ZZ
  INNER JOIN students AS Q ON Q.mentor_id = ZZ.staff_num;

Without aliases makes each part understandable without having to jump around and hold extra context in your head:

  SELECT
      staff.first_name
  FROM staff
  INNER JOIN students ON student.mentor_id = staff.staff_num;

Whether or not you agree on the exact number [0], humans have limited working memory and aliases that don't group up concepts use it up unnecessarily.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Pl...

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