There are too many crappy demos out there. It just takes a little extra time and some empathy to tie your tutorial to a real problem.
A few weeks ago I asked a simple question on Twitter:
If you’ve been thinking about learning SQL but didn’t or haven’t, what’s stopping you? Would love to know more :) light me up!
The responses were mixed, but a friend of mine confided in me that SQL is just plain boring. The syntax is weird and they just couldn’t see why they would use it vs. an ORM.
 is DVD Rental. This is crazy-making because:
That last one gets me and yes, I do realize it’s a peave I have that I should probably let go of.
But here, let’s try it together. Google “Real World Datasets.” The results are pretty good:
One of the links you’ll end up at is Kaggle, one of my favorite data sites:
[Find Open Datasets and Machine Learning Projects | KaggleDownload Open Datasets on 1000s of Projects + Share Projects on One Platform. Explore Popular Topics Like Government, Sports, Medicine, Fintech, Food, More. Flexible Data Ingestion. |
OK, I’m done ranting! I have been meaning to create a SQL resource for people who want to get started with database “stuff”. As mentioned above, people just won’t care if they can’t see the value of a tool to the things they actually care about.
Given that it’s the start of the American football season and that I have quite a few friends trying to figure out who to start on their fantasy football team - I figured that this would make a pretty damn good SQL tutorial.
Turns out it did! I’ve had over 120 downloads in the last 24 hours, and that’s just announcing it on Twitter.
I found my data set on Kaggle, which I liked as it was concise and simple to work with. As you might imagine, this data can be intense! I just wanted something in summary for that could be used for a draft cheatsheet.
If you’re interested in SQL, go have a look! It’s 70 pages long and absolutely free.
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