Top all-time · #11185
Scott Pierce
Personal blog · ddrscott.github.io/blogprogrammingproductivity
Scott Pierce writes Why, Scott, WHY?!?, a personal blog at ddrscott.github.io about programming and productivity. Since 2016, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times, most often “What the SQL?? Lateral Joins”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Scott Pierce's posts on PostgreSQL, including function pipelines and LATERAL joins, for writing SQL without deep nesting. Comments cite the LATERAL post as a source rather than judging it.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Personal tech blog by Scott Pierce. SQL, Vim, Ruby, and tools for problems no one thinks they have.
Most-linked posts?
- What the SQL?? Lateral Joins3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-12-13
What Hacker News says?
To do something similar without custom extensions, it's worth knowing about Postgres's lateral joins, which allow you to reuse columns from the left side of your join in the right side. It basically realizes the "enrich my results" promise that SQL should always have had, and makes incredibly flexible analytics queries possible without ever needing to indent more than once! https://heap.io/blog/postgresqls-powerful-…
Comment linking /blog/2017/what-the-sql-lateral/
on “Function pipelines: Building functional programming into PostgreSQL”Submitted Dev Blogging Tools as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI think part of it is that LATERAL JOINs were (are, for folks still on <12, which is probably a lot of them) able to be run when needed rather than having to be completely materialized upstream. Now that CTEs don't have to be materialized, this is less interesting. Beyond that, LATERAL JOINs are really nice way to write out a subquery without a ton of nesting, as shown at https://ddrscott.github.io/blog/2017/what-th…
Comment linking /blog/2017/what-the-sql-lateral/
on “PostgreSQL’s New Join Type: LATERAL (2014)”Submitted A Rustic Journey Through Stream Stats as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Vim and Ag and Sidebar = Vim-Side-search Plugin as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Get Better at Anything as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What the SQL?? Lateral Joins as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Yank without Jank – How to prevent the cursor from moving after yanking in Vim as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Recovering 10x Developer as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Making a Window Submode in Vim as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sensible Horizontal Scrolling: How to Make Vim Scroll Like Everything Else as a story · 1 points
HN discussion