Reading more
Its not even January the first and I've already decided
that I want to read more. Whilst I'm probably not going to read Pauls
list of must reads for anyone wanting to write a storage engine more
and more work I come across requires understanding of more complex algorithms.
I've never done a computer science degree so have never learnt even basic stuff
like a bubble sort.
Many people often bash anyone working on Microsoft technologies when they
hail a new piece of technology because often its not new all but rather very
dated. Its just only now that Microsoft implement it in their product. David
Dewitt's keynote at PASS on column store was a real eye opener as to why some of
the other database engines do well in certain markets.
Having said that many algorithms have been covered before, the processing
power now available means that some that were only theoretically possible before
are now possible.For example, if you have something that needs to process 1
million records and perform a few thousand calculations on each row, whats the
best way to do it. You can write a single SQL statement to do it, but is there a
better way.
So I think next year I'm going to be dusting off some of my old maths books
and some newer books and see how far I get before my brain starts to
hurt.