TedDallas's comments

TedDallas | 2 years ago | on: Fine-tuning GPT-3.5-turbo for natural language to SQL

At a certain level of complexity it is easier to write the damn SQL than it is to explain your query to GPT.

TedDallas | 2 years ago | on: CudaText: Cross-platform, open source code editor written in Object Pascal

Nice to see a cool looking cross platform editor written in Free Pascal with Lazarus. Pascal is a surprisingly expressive language.

TedDallas | 3 years ago | on: Every single time I open your software, I'm asked to download an update

Agile cargo cult software development there. Got to get that 4 byte change in this sprint in order to prove that the team's fantasy points are burning down.

TedDallas | 3 years ago | on: Friendlier SQL with DuckDB

Does it support a syntax for recursive queries? In T-SQL we use recursive CTEs which are ugly as hell.

This is very cool though. There are lot of features that would make my life easier. Group By All is noice.

TedDallas | 4 years ago | on: Happy 27th Birthday, Delphi

If you liked Delphi then Lazarus is a great open source alternative for WYSIWYG Linux and Windows forms based application programming.

Recently I used it to create a little SQL editor with syntax highlighting for Maria DB. It only took a few hours which was mostly due to me trying to remember my Pascal syntax.

Lazarus also has a nice online package manager with a 1.5 zillion components available.

Object Pascal can feel antiquated. But Free Pascal remains fast, stable, and reasonably feature rich without much syntax bloat over the years.

TedDallas | 5 years ago | on: Stored Procedures as a Back End

Er ... SQL Server Management Studio is based on Visual Studio shell, and it does a fine job debugging stored procedures. I also code in C# and agree it also works well for that.

TedDallas | 5 years ago | on: Stored Procedures as a Back End

Recursion in SQL is one of the questions I always ask Data Engineers during interviews. The answer in MS T-SQL is to use a recursive CTE. It is not a common problem, but it comes up once in a while. Using a CTE is a better solution than calling an SP recursively because you can only nest 32 calls deep. In the MS Azure SQL Data Warehouse product you are simply fucked if you need to do recursion.

TedDallas | 5 years ago | on: Introduction to Ada

Nice documentation. Ada looks a lot like Pascal. It is interesting that SPARK is a subset of subset of Ada.

TedDallas | 7 years ago | on: FizzBuzz in ten languages

--A T-SQL version

  Select Case When SomeNumber % 3 = 0 and SomeNumber % 5 = 0 Then 'FizzBuzz'
              When SomeNumber % 3 = 0 Then 'Fizz'
              When SomeNumber % 5 = 0 Then 'Buzz'
              Else Convert(VarChar(10), SomeNumber)
              End As Answer
  From (
      Select Top 100 
          SomeNumber = Row_Number() Over (Order By [object_id]) 
      From sys.all_objects
  ) as Answers

TedDallas | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: What are useful CS theories you actually use at work?

Data structures - knowing your basic data structures will help you chose the right path for the use case. Even in SQL it is helpful to understand B-Trees.