Top all-time · #643
Simple Talk
Company blog · red-gate.com/simple-talkprogrammingdata
Simple Talk is the company blog at red-gate.com, writing about programming and data. Since 2008, 97 different Hacker News readers have linked it 113 times, most often “Chris Date and the Relational Model (2014)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Database DevOps tools trusted by 92% of the Fortune 100. SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL and more — from schema design and migrations to monitoring and test data.
Most-linked posts?
- Chris Date and the Relational Model (2014)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-10-21
- /library/dont-just-roll-the-dice4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-05-09
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-07-27
- The Framework Myth2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-20
- /products/sql-development/sql-compare/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-03-19
- /products/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-28
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-08-14
- /simple-talk/opinion/geek-of-the-week/chuck-moore-on-the-lost-art-of-keeping-it-simple/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-09-15
- /simple-talk/blogs/statistics-sql-simple-linear-regressions/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-02-22
- .NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to the .NET community2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-02-02
What Hacker News says?
You can force a certain query plan in SQL Server’s newer version( https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/sql/database-administra... ) but most of the time query plans won’t change unless the statistics or cardinality of the data changes. You control both of those things.
Comment linking /simple-talk/sql/database-administration/the-sql-server-2016-query-store-forcing-execution-plans-using-the-query-store/
on “How SQL Database Engines Work, by the Creator of SQLite (2008) [video]”Submitted .NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to the .NET community as a story · 93 points
HN discussionIn .NET you have the low-level runtime machinery implemented in the CLR (Common Language Runtime), but the transformation from async-await to state machine code is done completely at compile time. Basically, just like C# (and VB.NET and C++ .NET task/then) provides syntax and semantics for async-await, Rust provides it at language level too. (And it defines how the compiler transforms it into Future objects.) But, s…
Comment linking /simple-talk/dotnet/net-framework/the-overhead-of-asyncawait-in-net-4-5/
on “Tokio 1.0 – async runtime for Rust”Submitted Chris Date and the Relational Model (2014) as a story · 73 points
HN discussionThis is an interesting and thoughtful piece but I think Mike (the author) does rather underestimate his impact. I never worked with him directly but we both overlapped at Redgate for several years. During the time I was there he wrote code that was integrated into Simple Talk ( https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/ ), which is/was Redgate's website for publishing content, articles, tutorials etc., useful to SQL Serv…
Comment linking /simple-talk/
on “My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry”Submitted Red Gate is hiring, all interviewed will get an iPad as a story · 57 points
HN discussionYou can unit test stored procedures. For example, with T-SQL can use the open source unit testing framework tSQLt: http://tsqlt.org/ tSQLt is used by the commercial SQL Test product from Red Gate if you wanted a more polished user experience: https://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-test/i...
Comment linking /products/sql-development/sql-test/index
on “What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)”Submitted Git Strategizing: Branch, Commit, Review, and Merge as a story · 37 points
HN discussionIf you encounter such an issue, there are ways around it: https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/sql/performance/control...
Comment linking /simple-talk/sql/performance/controlling-execution-plans-with-hints/
on “What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL (2014)”Submitted RBAR: Row by Agonizing Row (2007) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThat sounds like some Bad CaRMa that I read about once... https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/opinion/opinion-pieces/... ... which while there were other red-gate posts out there, I can't find that one ever submitted as a dup to link the comments about it (this shall be rectified).
Comment linking /simple-talk/opinion/opinion-pieces/bad-carma/
on “The Time I Lied to the CTO and Saved the Day”Submitted Current State of the NewSQL/NoSQL Cloud Arena as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHi - the book is freely available from Neil Davidson's personal website at: https://neildavidson.com/downloads/dont-just-roll-the-dice-2... And from the Redgate Software website at: https://www.red-gate.com/library/dont-just-roll-the-dice Hope that helps.
Comment linking /library/dont-just-roll-the-dice
on “Don't just roll the dice – Software pricing guide (2012) [pdf]”Submitted Hacking Visual Studio as a story · 3 points
HN discussionOh certainly. Maybe Codd and Todd for papers, Date for books? Somewhat related, this interview with Date on the relational model: https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/opinion/opinion-pieces/...
Comment linking /simple-talk/opinion/opinion-pieces/chris-date-and-the-relational-model/
on “Ask HN: What are the most fundamental books on computer science?”Submitted SQL: Performance implications of parametized queries (2012) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionRed-gate has some decent and current t-sql programming books and mssql dev books available for free. http://www.red-gate.com/community/books/
Comment linking /community/books/
on “A list of free programming books”Submitted Counting More Efficiently as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere are some better lists for laws of Software Development: [1] http://www.globalnerdy.com/2007/07/18/laws-of-software-devel... [2] https://exceptionnotfound.net/fundamental-laws-of-software-d... (not so good but with solid discussions from HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11574715 ) And more: [3] https://embeddedartistry.com/blog/2018/8/13/timeless-laws-so... (a whole book titled Timeless Laws of Software…
Comment linking /simple-talk/opinion/opinion-pieces/some-laws-of-software-development/
on “Famous Laws of Software Development (2017)”Submitted To work quickly, I need information that is correct as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHow about trying to sell the company to http://www.red-gate.com , who IIRC built most of their business on making tools to deal with the awful parts of database systems?
Comment linking /
on “A profitable, growing, useful, legal, well-loved... failure”Submitted Grant Fritchey: Learning PostgreSQL with Grant: Introducing Vacuum as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf you use MS SQL Server, Red Gate has a solution for that [0]. I don't know if there is something similar for other RDBMSs. [0]: http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-source-...
Comment linking /products/sql-development/sql-source-control/
on “What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL”Submitted The Sins of Select as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTry Joe Celko's book "SQL for Smarties" or ... https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/sql/t-sql-programming/w...
Comment linking /simple-talk/sql/t-sql-programming/window-functions-in-sql/
on “SQLite Release 3.25.0 adds support for window functions”Submitted The Framework Myth as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI know a lot of people here balk at the idea of paying for tooling, but Red Gate's Reflector[1] is absolutely amazing for situations like this. Not only is it a decompiler, but it allows you to decompile at debug-time and step into third party libraries. Assuming they haven't been obfuscated, this is an extremely useful tool. I've used it to track down a number of issues within Visual Studio itself and within some o…
Comment linking /products/dotnet-development/reflector/
on “I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL”Submitted Running Apache Spark applications written in C# as a story · 2 points
HN discussionKnuth's 2% estimate is the number of people who "really “resonates” with programming the way I do" [1], it is not an estimate for the number of people who have "what it takes" to program for a living. [1] https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/opinion/geek-of-the-wee...
Comment linking /simple-talk/opinion/geek-of-the-week/donald-knuth-geek-of-the-week/
on “Google Summer of Code in 2022 – No longer limited to students”Submitted Designing Highly Scalable Database Architectures as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
