We had an error on our computer at work and the IT guy looked it up on the internet right there in front of me. I'm thinking "I need to take some night classes so I can have his job."
99% of computer skill nowadays is knowing how to obtain an Internet connection, and then the manner in which one should conduct a search in order to return the most useful information.
The hard part is understanding how the people who put all this information on the web in the first place expect you to be searching for it. This is why before becoming a technical guru, you must first spend at least three years in the company of computer types, under cover of the pretence of getting a degree.
what i mean by that being your work paying for stuff. perhaps they have benefits that can be applied to a tech course or like you said to community college.
sometimes just expressing the interest (hey how did they get this to do that?) frequently is enough to put you ahead in line for the next rung.
I'm one of the people on the opposite end of this. I get asked(Incidentally, I learnt T-SQL in about three months using not one book. Just shattered remnants of a University course I slept through, the SQL Server help, and Google
( ... )
hehehe... never give me your IM!! i am totally that guy.
to be fair, i am not a programmer, nor have i ever been. i am learning sql in order to provide data to the marketing department, so you can guess that i am not exactly in a super techie position. i'm confident my boss has been frustrated by me asking her something i could have got to through trial and error, but since i'm going at this all bass-ackwards i never know what trial to try or what the error means once i've tried it. it doesn't help me much that the error messages from Microsoft SQl Query Analyzer where i write 100% of my queries are... not so helpful.
trust me, i'm more frustrated that my brain doesn't seem to work like a programmer's brain and that i'm having to ask these questions... at least i try to do it with grace and humility. :)
I find that one of the reasons that the SQL books aren't very helpful is because they are relegated to covering general SQL, and not the specific stuff that each database has at your fingertips. Most of the functions, and things like that, aren't standardized, for the most part. So, what works in MS SQL Server may or may not work in Oracle, Sybase, PostgreSQL, Informix, or what have you.
Luckily, you have already mastered one of the great instincts of the programmer: "There must be a function for this!" I'm serious! This is how programmers learn new languages. We start writing code, we are confronted by a seemingly conventional problem that we don't want to write code for, and then we say, "There must be a function for this!"
So once I've said, "there must be a function for this!" where do I go from there? Hindsight is always 20/20 for these things. (I know this is probably not a question you can just answer but not matter hos simple or elementary your advice might be, I promise, I need it.)
I've had this problem with some of my protege's at the office as well. The turning point is usually when I tell them to stop searching for MSSQL on google, but T-SQL, which is the dialect spoken by MS Sql Server. SQL is supposed to be a unified language off in happy database candyland, but don't be deceived - the modern database landscape looks more like the Balkans circa 1916.
I look in the books for about 5 minutes and then I go on the internet and research that bidneh. Like, I'm on Oracle 9i so I go to searchoracle.com and see what people are actually writing out in the real world.
You can find almost any script out there somewhere. It's amazing. This is how I troubleshoot code that I either inherited or I'm helping one of my team fix.
And no, it's not just M$ - we're running Oracle 9i on a friggin' UNIX server and M$ has nothing to do with what we're doing, and it's still outrageous. The books tell you what's possible - but bulletin boards and database forums tell you what's being done.
Comments 32
Reply
The hard part is understanding how the people who put all this information on the web in the first place expect you to be searching for it. This is why before becoming a technical guru, you must first spend at least three years in the company of computer types, under cover of the pretence of getting a degree.
Reply
Reply
sometimes just expressing the interest (hey how did they get this to do that?) frequently is enough to put you ahead in line for the next rung.
Reply
Reply
to be fair, i am not a programmer, nor have i ever been. i am learning sql in order to provide data to the marketing department, so you can guess that i am not exactly in a super techie position. i'm confident my boss has been frustrated by me asking her something i could have got to through trial and error, but since i'm going at this all bass-ackwards i never know what trial to try or what the error means once i've tried it. it doesn't help me much that the error messages from Microsoft SQl Query Analyzer where i write 100% of my queries are... not so helpful.
trust me, i'm more frustrated that my brain doesn't seem to work like a programmer's brain and that i'm having to ask these questions... at least i try to do it with grace and humility. :)
p.s. nice icon.
Reply
Luckily, you have already mastered one of the great instincts of the programmer: "There must be a function for this!" I'm serious! This is how programmers learn new languages. We start writing code, we are confronted by a seemingly conventional problem that we don't want to write code for, and then we say, "There must be a function for this!"
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
You can find almost any script out there somewhere. It's amazing. This is how I troubleshoot code that I either inherited or I'm helping one of my team fix.
And no, it's not just M$ - we're running Oracle 9i on a friggin' UNIX server and M$ has nothing to do with what we're doing, and it's still outrageous. The books tell you what's possible - but bulletin boards and database forums tell you what's being done.
Just a tip from your neighborhood DBA. :D
Reply
I jest, our DBA has been pretty nice to me so far. But I have a feeling someday I'm going to find out why everyone else walks on eggshells around her.
Reply
Leave a comment