I recently finished going through a very good guide to MySQL by Bucky Roberts who is a popular programming teacher on Youtube.  His channel is called thenewboston and I highly recommend checking his tutorials out if you are looking for a good learning resource.  The tutorial was concise and to the point and covered:

• Basic keywords and statements such as SELECT, FROM
• PRIMARY KEY
• Fully Qualified Ids
• Filtering keywords such as WHERE, AND, OR, IN, NOT IN, GROUP BY (can be used with functions), ORDER BY (DESC), and LIMIT
• Wildcards: %, _
• Column Creation using Concat with AS
• Functions such as UPPER(), SQRT()
• Aggregate Functions such as COUNT(), AVG(), SUM(), MAX(), MIN()
•  SUBQUERIES
• Joining Tables using Inner Joins and Outer Joins (LEFT OUTER JOIN, RIGHT OUTER JOIN)
• Unions for getting a single result from multiple queries (UNION)
• Fulltext Searching using ADD FULLTEXT() function with Match() and Against(), IN BOOLEAN MODE using ‘+’ or ‘-‘
• Editing Databases with INSERT INTO and VALUES keywords
• Editing data with UPDATE and SET keywords, as well as DELETE
• Creating Tables with CREATE TABLE and specifying parameters with name, data type, max data storage size and setting the PRIMARY KEY using NOT NULL and AUTO_INCREMENT
• Adding and removing columns with ALTER TABLE, ADD and DROP COLUMN keywords
• Creating Views using CREATE VIEW and Concat() function
• Backing up and restoring Databases using PHPMyAdmin

I really enjoyed learning about MySQL and am hungry for more.  I’m looking forward to  continuing to learn about more advanced topics including Triggers, Cursors and Stored Procedures.  It’s amazing to me how many high quality learning resources are out there on Youtube, Udemy, Codecademy, Freecodecamp.org and all over the internet, a lot of which are low cost or even free.  For someone who is interested in learning all they can, it is truly a playground of knowledge.

If you want to take a look at my notes that I took while going through this tutorial, they are attached here.  The format is basic and it is just a simple text file, but it should give you an idea of what the course covers and it might be useful to you to peruse for review or to get your feet wet with SQL.

MySQL Tutorial Notes

I’ve been listening to some podcasts lately while making some long drives to visit friends and family.  Two of them in particular have proven to be very informative and I’ve learned a few things that I’ve taken note of for future use.

The first podcast is called Careerjs and can be found here.  And another one I’ve been finding helpful is Code Newbie found here.

Careerjs is more Javascript focused, but there are also some helpful podcasts on interviewing and job search/recruiting.   Code Newbie is more general and podcasts include interviews with top experts in various fields including Web Design, Development (incl. CMS, Custom Website and Application Developers) and Web Performance.

Some key takeaways from listening to the podcasts that I’ve filed into the memory bank include:

• Two things that can affect how fast your website loads are: 1) Pic Size and Location (JPG is common, but GIF and PNG are better file types for typical pics that are uploaded to the website.  Storing the pics on the server instead of linking to them externally in the anchor tags by href also allows for faster loading times.   2) FONT PACKAGE SIZE.  Check the size of the font pack(s) you are using.  You should only use a couple, maybe 3 at most on the site to optimize loading times.  Check and compare the size of the pack to other options to minimize the data load.
• When dealing with currency data in applications (i.e. for finance or banking software, etc.), do not use float numbers for the cents amount.  Use integer cents.  Floats are not 100% accurate (applies also when rounded or fixed to two decimal places).  This small inaccuracy can affect yield results when dealing with expressions involving a small number and a much larger number in particular.
• Look for companies that you would like to be a part of and have an interest in and contact them.  Don’t wait for a recruiter to reach you.  A lot of times if you contact a company directly and explain why you’re interested in working for them and what value you can provide to help them, then that goes a long way,
• Go to meetups to develop relationships in person with other coders and potential employers.  It’s very important that people know you in person.

I’ll continue to highlight takeaways and post things I learn from listening to these podcasts that might help others out.  There are many other useful podcasts that I have on my list to get to as well.