Are the posted questions getting worse?
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SQLRNNR (1/27/2012)
jcrawf02 (1/27/2012)
SQLRNNR (1/27/2012)
GSquared (1/27/2012)
sturner (1/27/2012)
GSquared (1/27/2012)
Stop trying to help them.
Personally, I am growing more and more fond of Celko's approach with each passing day.
I understand the temptation, truly do.
Just don't succumb to it.
Or (karma) next time you go to the doctor and say, "I'm not sure what's wrong, but I just don't feel good", he might prescribe cyanide. 😛
But the dark side is sooooo tantalizing
Speaking of which (sorry Roy), I just saw the commercial with the dogs barking the Imperial March for the first time last night, laughed my @$$ off, especially when the greyhound came out as the AT-AT!
Very good commercial
Bwahahaaaa, that's hysterical.
- Craig FarrellNever stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
For better assistance in answering your questions[/url] | Forum Netiquette
For index/tuning help, follow these directions.[/url] |Tally Tables[/url]
Twitter: @AnyWayDBA -
Brandie Tarvin (1/27/2012)
So, question of the day. How do you help people who refuse to be helped? People who are resistant to your suggestions of "test it" or "try this".I'm talking forum peeps AND people you may know locally.
Thoughts?
People who are resistant to "test it": no point in trying, they can't be helped.
People who are resistant to "try this": depends what "this" is and how the resistance is manifested - if the response makes it clear that "this" was too esoteric for them to understand but they are eager to try anything they can understand, and it seems reasonable that they might have difficulty with understanding, then yes, why shouldn't I try to help?
People who don't provide the information needed: usually I try to wheedle it out of them, unless they've made it obvious that they are too lazy to provide it (in which case they get no help from me). One way of wheedling the information is to make suggestions based on what little they have provided, but point out that it may be wrong because I'm partly in the dark - that can sometimes provokes a flood of information; I've noticed that few people here do that, perhaps because it can also povoke a flood of abuse.
But the only place I've seen the sort of thing that is complained about now and again in this thread (and probably is the original cause of this thread) is in forums like SQLServerCentral not in person (that's not to say that I haven't seen arrogant and arrant incompetence and stupidity in person, that's different - I've even seen it when interviewing, which amazes me because it's a surefire way not to get the job).
Tom
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GSquared (1/27/2012)
Brandie Tarvin (1/27/2012)
GSquared (1/27/2012)
Brandie Tarvin (1/27/2012)
So, question of the day. How do you help people who refuse to be helped? People who are resistant to your suggestions of "test it" or "try this".I'm talking forum peeps AND people you may know locally.
Thoughts?
Stop trying to help them.
Let me rephrase. Someone who comes from another IT job in which the things we do in SQL are not "normal" nor do they make sense has trust issues with believing that "yes, it does actually work that way."
How do you go about fixing the trust issues or teaching them to let go of all the instincts that tells them "this is wrong?"
That's a little different than refusing to be helped.
I find it very helpful in that kind of situation to be able to explain the differences between the two paradigms.
For example, I often find developers moving into T-SQL horribly confused by "Case", since the functionality is completely different in procedural code. They think of it as a multi-branch IF, which it is in, for example, VB.
So, when I run into that, I explain the difference, and how to achieve the end result they want.
The human mind understands by comparing data against other data. We describe colors by what they're like or not like, for example. Coding paradigms work the same way.
There are three basic calculations on any given datum:
1. Is it the same as something known,called an "identity".
2. Is it similar to something known.
3. Is it different from something known.
If someone has never seen an apple, but has seen other types of fruit, you could compare similarities and differences from, for example, oranges.
All data works on gradient scales. The real world doesn't really have a full identity or a full difference. Cars are "completely different" from bananas in the human mind, but they're both objects made of energy, that exist in space, and pass through time. Poems are different from planets, but they both begin, change, and end in time, and they both are affected by and impose effects on the energies and spaces around them. And so on. So work on degree of identity, degree of similarity/dissimilarity, and degree of difference.
Follow that pattern, and you can explain anything you understand to anyone, given the time and effort to do so.
Think of the usual way to explain indexing in databases. When you do that, you explain similarities to known things, like phone books or indexes at the back of books. Similarities, identities, differences, degrees thereof.
Also very helpful in educating someone on any subject, including this one, are three basic barriers to learning:
1. Terminology.
2. Connection to the real world (mass).
3. Sequential concepts (gradient).
You can't tech someone what indexes are if they don't know the word "index", unless you define it.
It's really hard to teach someone how to code without providing examples (real-world connection or mass).
Forget about teaching advanced material to someone who hasn't grasped more basic material on the same subject.
So, when going over similarities/differences/identities, make sure you clarify needed terms, cover basics before advanced material, and provide examples that are in some way tangible.
Those basics apply to any and all forms of education. Everything else about education can be extrapolated from them.
Yes, education can be a big problem. Getting someone who is firmly grounded in procedural programming (especially extremely primitive pseudo-OO things like C++ or VB or Java) to understand declarative programming or even programming in a language which has a large declarative substrate with procedural bits added in (eg SQL, Haskell with Monads, Prolog with CUT)can be quite difficult, but until you've done it they won't understand why somethings work and perform well, other things work but perform abominably, and yet others don't work at all. [sidetrack: I wonder if it's as difficult to go the other way - discover procedural after a thorough grounding in declarative?]
I agree with Gus that needing that education is different from refusing to be helped.
Incidentally, the first language I came across with a CASE construct (a) was thoroughly procedural and (b) had case expressons, not case statements. That was somewhere between late 67 and early 69, and the language must have existed for a while before that or I wouldn't have needed to look at it. (I can't remember what it was called, and doubt it survived very long.
Tom
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Glad to see everyone behaved, and yes, I had a great day on the slopes at Keystone.
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/way0utwest
Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help
My Blog: www.voiceofthedba.com -
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (1/27/2012)
Glad to see everyone behaved, and yes, I had a great day on the slopes at Keystone.What? You were gone and we missed having a party?
Dang it!
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Any other List members going to Tech on Tap today? It's shaping up to be an excellent event.
----------------------------------------------------The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood... Theodore RooseveltThe Scary DBAAuthor of: SQL Server 2017 Query Performance Tuning, 5th Edition and SQL Server Execution Plans, 3rd EditionProduct Evangelist for Red Gate Software
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Grant Fritchey (1/28/2012)
Any other List members going to Tech on Tap today? It's shaping up to be an excellent event.What is Tech on Tap?
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When you encounter a problem, if the solution isn't readily evident go back to the start and check your assumptions.
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It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.
What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?
You ask a glass of water. -- Douglas Adams -
Tech on Tap is a free event, single tracked on one topic, yesterday's was on Virtualization. There were three 90 minute sessions and time for networking and questions in between. It was an excellent event.
Oh.... right, and it was held at a brew pub so there was excellent sponsored/free beer all day long.
Jes Borland and I did a session on monitoring SQL Server in a virtual environment. Went pretty well, but I haven't seen the evals yet.
Go to techontap.org to see about the upcoming events. They're doing the next on Sharepoint and they're already planning one more for this year.
----------------------------------------------------The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood... Theodore RooseveltThe Scary DBAAuthor of: SQL Server 2017 Query Performance Tuning, 5th Edition and SQL Server Execution Plans, 3rd EditionProduct Evangelist for Red Gate Software
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Grant Fritchey (1/29/2012)
Tech on Tap is a free event, single tracked on one topic, yesterday's was on Virtualization. There were three 90 minute sessions and time for networking and questions in between. It was an excellent event.Oh.... right, and it was held at a brew pub so there was excellent sponsored/free beer all day long.
Jes Borland and I did a session on monitoring SQL Server in a virtual environment. Went pretty well, but I haven't seen the evals yet.
Go to techontap.org to see about the upcoming events. They're doing the next on Sharepoint and they're already planning one more for this year.
Excellent, I'm learning Sharepoint now. Good timing!
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When you encounter a problem, if the solution isn't readily evident go back to the start and check your assumptions.
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It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.
What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?
You ask a glass of water. -- Douglas Adams -
I’m starting to get a little bit worried whenever I dig in my backyard now, since the last time when I dug up a tombstone (the carrots, btw, didn’t do too well.)
After much, much, MUCH rain I noticed that of the two downpipes from the roof of my house, one always overflowed and flooded my backyard, whereas the other always seemed fine. Getting tired of wading to the garbage bin to throw out my rubbish I decided to dig out the ‘working’ pipe to see where it went and maybe join in the other pipe. The ground, of course, is sand filled with rocks of various sizes meaning that digging is a pain as I can’t shove in the shovel coz it’s not just sand and I can’t skirt the rocks coz I’ve no idea just how big they are. Eventually I did manage to find the destination of the Nile.
At this point I should mention that when I moved into the house almost 10 years ago my elderly neighbour pointed to a patch of cement in my lawn and mentioned that that was the top of the old sewage pit before the sewage line went through about the time of WWII. I’d promptly covered it with some dirt for the grass and forgotten about it. Almost 10 years later I could have saved myself ½ a day of digging rocks and just gone straight to the pit which was in fact my stormwater pit.
Hurrah! But, um, why is this cement moving? I’ll just prod it with my shovel and see what happens. Oh look, a jolly big hole just opened up in my lawn. And at this point my missus comes out and spies the gigantic, child swallowing, sink hole which has just appeared, all 30cm diameter of it. I’m ‘politely’ reminded that we have a party the following week and about 10 kids will be running about in our yard, and informed that she’s just going shopping and I’d better have it fixed by the time she gets back.
The problem is that although the hole is only about 30cm, I’ve no idea how wide or deep the actual pit is. I figure if I leave it the kids will get curious and stand around the crumbly lip of the hole peering in, potentially the last we may ever see of them, so it’d be best if I took the old cement cover off and at least have a firm edge that wouldn’t give way. Much safer than a dark, mysterious hole.
I discovered that the cover was, but in the 1930’s, simply a sheet of corrugated iron over the pit with cement slathered over it. Over the years the iron had rusted away leaving the cement with no support. The years had also seen the pit silt up so my 110x120cm pit was only 20cm deep. And then I thought, “Hey, I could dig this out and pipe the other downpipe into it,” which I set to with the enthusiasm I’d usually reserve for a just-installed new version of SQL Server. (I so wanna get my hands on 2012!)
Of course I’m just scraping out the last silt when the missus returns and discovers me up to my paunch in a hole that’s now 110x120x75cm, and the look she gave me is not suitable for metaphor. This digging had taken the rest of the day and the sun was setting on what was supposed to be a quick investigation.
The following day sees me urgently trying to find a reinforced pit cover or manhole cover or something to put over the top of the child consuming portal to another world. I did find some places that sold “capstones” up to 10cm thick, and I had no idea how I’d get one on a Sunday, let alone get it into the car (a Ford Escape for those interested) and then manhandle it by myself into position. Those babies are heavy. I decided that I might be able to drive around and find something, like a motel to stay in until I covered the pit. And luckily I did drop by a landscaping place that sold Cement Struts. These were reinforced 11x11x120cm beams of cement usually used for stairwells or rooves above passageways. But the beauty of them was I could lift them myself, one by one, and so I got 10 and headed off home lickety split.
Did I mention that there had been a massive amount of rain, which had caused me to go digging in the first place to solve my flooding problem on the first sunny days in weeks? Well, that was the day before. By the time I returned a massive storm hit and I could barely see to drive. And once home I was again wading around, with my struts, trying desperately to cover the pit. Just before I finished I knocked through a piece of piping to which I intended to join on the other downpipe, so that I didn’t have to open this pit again.
And, as I fully intended all along, I got the job done but the end of the weekend, and the following weekend no little kids got lost, disappeared, or otherwise went missing.
Steve.
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Cement doesn't last forever, especially if you have freeze and thawing during the year.
And covering with a thin topping of soil probably holds in moisture.
Good thing you found it before someone dropped in.
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As someone with lots of DBMS experience, but new to SQL Server, I have found the SSC community to be an invaluable resource. I try to use BOL to find answers, or at least show me how to phrase my question so that no one will have to waste time deciphering it. I remember this from something I read long ago: "to ask a truly intelligent question requires that you already know 90% of the answer."
It's that last 10% that is the hardest and the SSC community has always stepped up on any question I've asked. Not just answering questions at hand, but proposing alternate information sources and tips on best practices, and ... the list goes on.
Thanks to all of you for putting up with the aggravation; some of us appreciate it very much.
Sigerson
"No pressure, no diamonds." - Thomas Carlyle
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BTW, Google indexes scarily useless things: 😉
-- Gianluca Sartori
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Fal (1/30/2012)
I’m starting to get a little bit worried whenever I dig in my backyard now, since the last time when I dug up a tombstone (the carrots, btw, didn’t do too well.)Steve, just to let you know I really enjoyed reading that.
Paul White
SQLPerformance.com
SQLkiwi blog
@SQL_Kiwi -
Gianluca Sartori (1/30/2012)
BTW, Google indexes scarily useless things: 😉Wow. It's a Googlewhack too.
Paul White
SQLPerformance.com
SQLkiwi blog
@SQL_Kiwi
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