[Discuss] SQL discussion

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On 01/13/2015 08:08 AM, markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
> Your bank uses it,

Indeed. I was changing a bank password yesterday and it kept telling me 
I needed a "special character", but I was putting special characters in 
my new password and it kept rejecting them. Finally, at the 
recommendation of the nice woman on the help line, I did what she does 
and put a "!" in my password. That was special enough.

The characters I was trying? "-", "+", "=". I think it wasn't that these 
are not special characters, but that they are too special and an SQL 
injection attack is a serious risk.

> How much of this is a reluctance to learn SQL?

Not in my case, because I already know SQL.

No, I am not very good at SQL, but I can get by. And I have had to get 
by enough in previous lives to know I don't like it.

I also know a little Fortran, and I don't want to program in it either. 
(Even though it apparently is still the best tool for some jobs.)

For this project I am programming in Python, and it looks like 
SQLAlchemy will let me continue to program in Python and not have to mix 
in another language.  Yet I will have flexibility in what underlying 
database I use.

I am not opposed to people writing relational databases, I am not 
opposed to my using relational databases other people worked hard to 
write. I am not opposed to SQL existing under the hood, but I want to 
keep that hood closed as much as possible.

Some programming languages I find annoying and I don't like them. I 
don't like Perl. Or C++. Heck I don't even like C--except for low level 
stuff where, though badly flawed, it remains about the best tool for the 
job.

We can talk about emacs vs. vi, too, and there will be technical merits 
to the two sides, but there will also be a large aesthetic component.

-kb, the Kent who stands by his right to dislike some things and like 
other things.