crmitchell (5/14/2014)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (5/14/2014)
I'm torn here. I think good solid basics in an area are important. However I'm not sure to what depth someone needs relational knowledge. There are lots of people that end up writing lots of CRUD, simple aggregates and basic report queries.
I think more we want to provide them with a way to understand when they're out of their depth. Maybe references on how much effort (resources) the computer should spend calculating problems per mm rows? Not sure.
I'd agree that people working in different fields will have differing requirements as to which areas they require deeper understanding but there are some basics which are fundemental and apply across pretty much all of IT.
One example of this is an understanding that computers store data in variables of finite length and use binary arithmetic and what the implications of that are. I wouldn't necessarily expect everyone to be able to multiply and divide in binary but it should be expected that they will know that floating point division may give an inexact result and how to address that.
Another applying particularly to SQL would be boolean algebra. How many times have there been questions posed where the poster is asking why they are missing results from a query because they do not understand how boolean operators - particularly AND and OR - combine.
Not everyone needs to remember De Marco's theorem but everyone should understand that in most (if not all?) languages that precedents apply. That is why I use brackets even when I know that precedence will do the "right thing". At least the next developer can see not only the implementation but also the intention. Erm, and because sometimes I get things wrong 🙂
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!