I Don't Care How You Pronounce SQL - Mary Perry
You ever had that thought where you just question if you're doing something the right way? Especially with coding and development being so public nowadays, it's often very hard to stop questioning, am I doing this the right way? Whether that's programming within a particular language or framework or just style or structure of code, are you doing it the right way? Are you doing something correctly? Well, if you've ever had that thought, we're gonna be diving into an article talking about how no 1 really cares how you pronounce SQL.
Josh:Welcome to the Learning Driven Development Podcast. I'm Josh Siri, and here's where I get the incredible opportunity to read, learn, and share with you articles, blogs, documentation, stories, or other forms of written content that exists in the tech space. On this episode of learning driven development, we're going to be reading I Don't Care How You Pronounce SQL by Mary. Mary is on GitHub as well as x slash Twitter. That's Mary Perry and this article is on devdot 2.
Josh:You can find the link in the description below if you are on YouTube, if you are in, on listening to this on a podcast, you can find it in the show notes as well. So I don't care how you pronounce SQL by Mary. As a quick reminder, I'll be sharing my thoughts and observations at the end of the episode just so I can put focus and attention on the article first. I don't care how you pronounce SQL, Mary. For some reason, the algorithm, trademark, keeps showing me posts about whether SQL should be pronounced SQL or SQL.
Josh:It's renting space in my head, and it's Saturday, so I wanted to rant about it. When I was in college, I was publicly corrected for pronouncing SQL as squill, and it caused a lot of shame. SQL is more on the SQL side of the argument, but I haven't run into it since. It's also how the instructor of the only database particular accent, but he was the a particular accent, but he was the only person I'd ever heard say SQL out loud before. I was at a really exciting point in my own learning because I was just moving from writing HTML, CSS, JavaScript to actually displaying data from queries in my projects on local host.
Josh:This felt extremely powerful and exciting. I was a freshman and taking an intro course in c as part of my actual coursework. But this SQL was independent learning, and I was excited to talk about it with people who knew more than me. In this case, upperclassmen. I was considering joining the campus ACM chapter.
Josh:The room was full of CS and IST majors on the SQL side, and the feedback was devastating. It was only a few sentences, but I suddenly felt really, really small. I didn't just start a conversation by saying, hey. Guess what, guys? I didn't know how to pronounce SQL Either I was going to ask a question about a join, which is now long forgotten and never got asked because I was absolutely flushed with embarrassment.
Josh:I never did join that chapter of the ACM, but I did go home and Google it to find that either pronunciation is acceptable and it seemed like a cruel punch line for the rejection I was feeling. It's been a few years and I've developed a list of context specific terms I use to actively avoid pronouncing SQL. Schema, DBMS, database, Postgres, query, join select, store, they're never quite right for the context, but I have also never been called out on it. I'm reminded my experience is not unique, though it's a little overblown by rumination. Through some comments I'm seeing tonight and because of conversations I've had with people in the decade since I went to college IRL, I've noticed anecdotally that, 1, people who have read and haven't heard it said and or learned MySQL first tend to say SQL.
Josh:People who have taken courses with audio, especially about PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL Server tend to say SQL. People who use SQLite are kind of wildcards. I think there's a subtle form of unintentional gatekeeping going on here. Many people stick to the form they themselves have been corrected to and correct others to that form with good intentions. Maybe it was lucky that the first time it happened to me was in a conversation during which a few other problematic things were said because that prompted me to actually look it up and ask a few professors who also said it really doesn't matter, usually with the caveat of their preference and why.
Josh:I had multiple office hours where professors basically reacted with the exact same vibe d Richard Hipp has in this changelog episode. But the time it takes to correct someone on pronunciation that truly doesn't matter sometimes prevents the thing that person was going to say next like it did with me. These conversations mostly happen when someone is trying to establish context before explaining something or asking a question. Even if they're just expressing enthusiasm, I think it's important to consider the vulnerability happening in conversation about code. If someone has just said the wrong pronunciation for the first time, there's almost certainly an experience mismatch or the element of entering into a conversation about this topic.
Josh:As far as courses go, I think it would have been cool if the instructor in the first course I took mentioned that you can pronounce it either way, but creating course material is also a pretty specific scenario. I always appreciate professors who remember to mention that either way is okay to their students during a lecture. It's something I might not have noticed if I didn't have such a bad experience, but, honestly, I think it doesn't matter. Was the accepted stance, there might be fewer arbitrarily truncated conversations in this particular arena between students and juniors. Or maybe they'd just be arguing about tabs versus spaces or the best editor or pineapple on pizza instead.
Josh:I think SQL slash SQL is different though because when you're learning a topic and get checked on your speech on what is basically the name of the topic, internal monologue can get to, I thought I understood this at least a little, but I don't even know what it's called pretty fast. With tabs versus spaces, we all know we're right and we absolutely going to keep doing whatever we've been doing. A few years ago, I had a conversation with someone who was really into inclusive pedagogy and taught math, but coded a bit as well. He pronounced it squill, rhymes with quill, intentionally every time. It sounded a bit meme y, a lot chat and jippity and a lot ridiculous.
Josh:It was actually kind of infuriating for a few conversations. Then, as I got used to it, I started to check my motives about being right and correcting people who are wrong about it. It kinda reminds me of the process I went through when I moved to a city for the first time and realized that people who use incorrect slash improper grammar are a, completely intelligible, and b, not wrong for doing it. I let go of my hard won feeling of being the most correct at grammar and realized maybe I was doing talking wrong. It wasn't until I came to this realization that I started to understand rich layers of meaning in speech I used to hear, but wrote off in lieu of listening.
Josh:I still feel like I'm pretty good at diagramming sentences, but I stopped letting that be a determining factor in conversations before they even started. The reason I ever did was because I worked so hard to be good at English grammar. I worked so hard to get good at English grammar be was because I was given positive feedback for speech and writing that was academically correct and disproportionately harsh feedback when I made mistakes. My sense of self was wrapped up in it. Now, when I remember the times I corrected other people for how they said something as I assumed I understood what they were saying, I'm sure I missed out on a lot.
Josh:Plus, it would take me at least 60% more time to write a blog post if I edit it to what my standards used to be before publishing. This post is not directed at any person in particular. Posts on X are very different than real life conversations and it's a good place to just have a take and really commit to it. I genuinely like the idea of squill or even squeal because they're jarring considering why we think something is correct can prepare us for how important that correctness is going to be in a conversation that will maybe someday happen. I've been practicing taking myself less seriously and my enthusiasm about learning and talking about code more seriously.
Josh:I'm still not there. I have become much more comfortable saying I don't know and jumping straight through the sting of embarrassment into actually listening to the answer. I don't care how you pronounce SQL. I care very much that you said SQL, and I would love to hear what you're going to say next. 1 of the things that I very much appreciate about this blog post is that I am a person who is always second guessing if I am doing something correctly.
Josh:In fact, my job that I do for a living of getting to help teach and share what Laravel and LiveWire and everything about Laravel do. I'm someone who hasn't been building in Laravel as long as a bunch of other people who are much smarter than me. But just because you don't know everything doesn't mean you're not qualified to speak about everything as well. 1 of the things I'm very passionate about is someone who is along the journey of learning something whether that be learning to code, whether that be, you know, learning how to write, or learning how to make videos, whatever that might be, usually you still are far enough along to teach someone else who is not as far along as you are. In fact, I think it's absolutely crucial on your learning journey to make sure that you are able and effectively able to communicate what you have learned so far.
Josh:It doesn't mean you're going to be able to communicate it all properly and correctly and you might mispronounce some things as well. Funny story is, for the longest time, I thought, feta cheese was pronounced theta because in my mind when I was in, you know, junior high and high school, I knew the Greek word theta, and I knew, like, a couple of other Greek words and feta cheese was Greek, so I was absolutely certain that the Greek cheese was theta. But in college, I got teased a lot when I was saying, oh, 1 of my favorite things is I love, you know, tacos with some feta cheese feta cheese on it. And, now, it's stuck it's stuck in my head that I can't forget to pronounce feta cheese the right way if if that even is the right way. I'm still positive that it could be feta, but we do this a lot with things that are less silly than that.
Josh:Just like Mary said, we often forget the context of what it means to actually learn something and listen to something as well as, you know, take in those conversational cues of that might not even be the point of what you're trying to get across or what the person across from you is trying to get across in their conversation. When it comes to best practices within code or best practices within building applications, a lot of times, I found myself diving into articles or videos just to make sure that, hey. I know that my application works, but I don't know if I'm doing it the right way. And, of course, once you get into, you know, advanced level territory, there might be things that are objectively better to do certain ways because maybe it's faster or maybe it's helpful later on in the future or if you need to refactor it, it's a lot easier to do so. But, if it works, it works.
Josh:And you don't necessarily need to have the proper knowledge on, you know, how to style a button or how to, you know, call an API request or how to name something or whether camo case or snake case is better within a Laravel or LiveWire component. You don't necessarily need to know all of that. There's best practice for a reason, yes, but it's not how you learn. You don't learn best practices and then automatically become better for it. If you're learning any new skill, you learn by doing, you learn by teaching, you learn by repetition and improving, and then the best practices come along the way.
Josh:So, there should be less of correcting people who are just trying to learn and more about helping people improve regardless of if they do things the way you do them in code and development and programming and life or not.