September 5, 2026 at 1:02 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Looking for New Blood
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
September 5, 2026 at 10:51 am
Grant, I think that our time is slowly running out. The time when people, not just in informatics, or especially in SQL, but in every aspect of life, used printed magazines and books is slowly disappearing, or has already shrunk to a minimum. When we were young and started our careers in IT, our information mostly came from books and conferences. The books, as it turned out, were losing their validity too quickly (the theoretical ones a bit slower). I bought many that were already outdated when they came off the press. Then the printed media, en masse, began to decline due to the acceleration of information life cycles and environmental impacts. I think we reached, or came close to, the end of the life of the classical conferences. The new generation would rather use quickly accessible information sources. Not just in IT. My daughter, the youngest, uses the internet and AI professionally at home instead of the library and books. Personally, I hate this new, extremely quickened world, but what can we do? Will we lose personal contacts, the joy of exchanging thoughts with living people IRL, or sitting down with a pint of beer to tell stories about work? Yes, we will. Will we lose that extremely important aspect of work and life which came from those little "secrets"? Yes, we will. Can we do anything with this? No.
September 5, 2026 at 2:13 pm
I think that the COVID shutdown really messed with young people's interest in meeting personally. They got used to communicating using phones and the internet rather than speaking personally with their peers and mentors. I hope we can encourage them to get back to meeting in person and running the conventions. Hopefully, we won't have the same thing that happened with Anime conventions -- the kids noticed that all of the SF cons were run by and attended by the same gang of old people and they felt they didn't have a place, so they started their own conventions. Not surprisingly, they had the same struggles that early SF conventions had with hotel contracts, security, funding, etc. They didn't want us old farts coming in and telling them what to do, despite the fact that we'd already solved the issues and once they deigned to listen to us, they discovered that we knew how to resolve about 95% of the issues they were having.
September 7, 2026 at 8:54 am
Grant, I think that our time is slowly running out. The time when people, not just in informatics, or especially in SQL, but in every aspect of life, used printed magazines and books is slowly disappearing, or has already shrunk to a minimum. When we were young and started our careers in IT, our information mostly came from books and conferences. The books, as it turned out, were losing their validity too quickly (the theoretical ones a bit slower). I bought many that were already outdated when they came off the press. Then the printed media, en masse, began to decline due to the acceleration of information life cycles and environmental impacts. I think we reached, or came close to, the end of the life of the classical conferences. The new generation would rather use quickly accessible information sources. Not just in IT. My daughter, the youngest, uses the internet and AI professionally at home instead of the library and books. Personally, I hate this new, extremely quickened world, but what can we do? Will we lose personal contacts, the joy of exchanging thoughts with living people IRL, or sitting down with a pint of beer to tell stories about work? Yes, we will. Will we lose that extremely important aspect of work and life which came from those little "secrets"? Yes, we will. Can we do anything with this? No.
Without a doubt, some of this is true. However, we're still monkeys. I was told, over and over, by people I honestly believe are WAY smarter than I am "We'll never see a return to the office, ever again." I knew better. Why? 'Cause I'm smart? Nope. Cause I read history. There have been many, many inventions that heralded the end of face-to-face communication, from the telegraph going forward. Not one, not one single one, ever made that elimination happen. Why? Cause we're monkeys. We communicate best face-to-face. The youngsters, even the most hooked up online ones, do too. Why? Cause they're monkeys.
I just don't want them to have to reinvent the wheel is all.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
September 7, 2026 at 8:55 am
I think that the COVID shutdown really messed with young people's interest in meeting personally. They got used to communicating using phones and the internet rather than speaking personally with their peers and mentors. I hope we can encourage them to get back to meeting in person and running the conventions. Hopefully, we won't have the same thing that happened with Anime conventions -- the kids noticed that all of the SF cons were run by and attended by the same gang of old people and they felt they didn't have a place, so they started their own conventions. Not surprisingly, they had the same struggles that early SF conventions had with hotel contracts, security, funding, etc. They didn't want us old farts coming in and telling them what to do, despite the fact that we'd already solved the issues and once they deigned to listen to us, they discovered that we knew how to resolve about 95% of the issues they were having.
100%
I just want to give them the keys to a functional automobile. Gas it up. Change the oil. It may have mileage on it, but it works, and works well. It's yours. Take it where you will. Have fun!
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
September 8, 2026 at 6:47 pm
There could be another problem. Businesses in North America do not need databases or SQL skills. Europe is not far behind. I am not sure skills hose are taught in programming classes any more. Every person who was so far able to open and close Excel is given, no more, no less - Python work with. We used to build two kinds of systems - for sale, and for in house needs. No more needs of any kind. Management is convinced that JIRA, Click UP, Salesforce, TurboTax are all that is needed. Why bother with databases when Share Point Lists exist? And they are so cute to work with, eh... Our skills and ourselves are obsolete. Not to many people understood what we were doing (databases and SQL), but people understood it was good for business. Not any more. We have Salesforce.
I have a nephew in programming trade. MS SQL? Thank you but no thank you. MySQL is good enough, we can ask Google or AI and off we go, there is app for everything...
It is their world, they will have to sort out what is good and useful and what is not.
Zidar's Theorem: The best code is no code at all...
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