Things you know now
Paul Randal has called me out today in the "Things you know now" series of blogs that is presently moving through the SQL Server blogsphere. I'm usually in awe of Paul's ability to churn interesting information out at a fast pace about SQL Server (& life!!) but for just this once, I'm going to try & keep up with him and publish today if possible, keep the momentum going etc..
The idea behind "Things you know now" is to share things we have learned that we didn't know early on in our careers. Clearly I haven't learned not to respond to things like this yet, so here goes!
There are two things that spring to mind -
* Question everything you read
Years ago, I accepted most of what I read as gospel. If the material was published in a book it HAD to be accurate, right? My first revelation that this might not be true came ~17 years ago when a friend pointed out that a history book I was reading at the time was authored by a notorious WWII holocaust denier. I wasn't far into the book when my friend pointed this out, but as I read on I realised that I could easily have read the entire book without realising the bias of its author.
No IT author deserves to be compared with THAT author (who doesn't deserve to be mentioned) but it is important to recognise that all authors have their strengths, weaknesses & biases and their work sometimes reflects this. I'm not saying that most IT books are rubbish - just that you do need to read between the lines sometimes & recognise that not every author actually has significant experience in everything he / she writes about. Maintaining a healthy level of skepticism also helps you to think through what other possibilities there might be, other than the "truth" you're reading & this can be a great foundation for creative thinking.
Of course there is much to be learned from reading & two of the best in the SQL Server business are Paul & his lovely wife Kim! I encourage all to read their work.. AND question it (c:
* Don't love computers too much - they won't love you back.
Computers are interesting things; SQL Server particularly so - especially from a performance tuning point of view! There's great satisfaction to be gained from helping others solve problems they're struggling with & I have enjoyed doing this enormously since opening my business "MyDBA" 5 years ago where we specialise in this field. Coming home from a day where you've made somebody's database system or query run hundreds of times faster is, indeed, very satisfying.
Unfortunately, staying at work late into the evening to tune more queries can also be tempting. Writing high quality programs can similarly stimulate the endorphins!
It is easy to get addicted to computers, especially if you're that very common kind of IT person who takes a lot of pride in what you do. It's a complicated business & despite Microsoft's best endeavours to make things simple for us, it just ain't so in so many cases.
It's important to recognise that computers will never give you back the time you give to them & other things in your life WILL suffer if you over-indulge.
Somebody who was retiring from a very active life spent in newsgroups once (back in the year ~2000) posted to the public SQL Server newsgroups "Don't love computers too much - they won't love you back" & I think this is really good advice, so I'm repeating it here. I have spent many, many late nights working with computers & my personality has hardened as a result. I've had some fantastic girls in my life but have never married, most probably due to addiction with going to extremes in my professional life.
Balance your life - take pride in your IT work but also recognise that the tools we work with aren't perfect so there's no reason to think others can expect perfection from you (try writing the perfect error handler, or the SQL program with perfect efficiency). Do your best & be as proud of going home as you are in the quality of your work.
Hopefully this has been somewhat useful!
I hereby tag the following Aussie SQL people: Darren Gosbell, Rob Farley and Mitch Wheat
Definitely time to go home too! (c: