Re:Interview with Don Chamberlin, designer of SQL
by dunkelheit on Thursday October 12, 2017 @12:39PM
(#15459227)
Disappointingly low on technical detail... For me the most interesting part of an interview with the original author of some well-established technology is when he or she is discussing something that you take for granted and says something along the lines of "oh, that thing is more of a historical accident, I would design it a bit differently today". These nuggets can really broaden your perspective, but I couldn't find any of them in this interview.
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Re:Interview with Don Chamberlin, designer of SQL
by maxxxxx on Thursday October 12, 2017 @03:07PM
(#15460442)
That's a problem with a lot of interviews. Journalists almost always go for the "human" side but I enjoy reading about the technical evolution and how things developed.
I just read a book about the development of windows NT. Same thing, a lot about people but not much about technical stuff.
Re:Interview with Don Chamberlin, designer of SQL
by zengid on Thursday October 12, 2017 @04:05PM
(#15460890)
I think the main nugget is that they took Codds powerful mathematical system for defining and manipulating relations and created a simpler way to interface with it through the English keywords SELECT FROM WHERE.
I see a similar thing happening in Elm, as it tries to translate Haskell/ML ideas into simpler concepts without all of the category theory.