The Irrational Fear of Lowercase SQL

Description

This image is a screenshot of a conversation on Twitter, initiated by the official account for Supabase (@supabase_io). The first tweet, posted on April 20, 2021, asks the developer community: 'Do you write SQL in uppercase or lowercase? Why do you prefer to do it that way?'. Below it is a reply from a user named 'nooral network' (@kd29598), whose profile picture is an anime character. The reply humorously confesses, 'UPPERCASE, for some reason i am scared of writing SQL in lowercase'. This meme captures a long-standing, semi-serious debate within the programming world. While most SQL databases are case-insensitive regarding keywords, a strong convention exists to write commands like 'SELECT', 'FROM', and 'WHERE' in all caps for readability, to distinguish them from table and column names. The joke lies in the user's dramatic and irrational 'fear' of deviating from this norm, a feeling that resonates with many senior developers who have had this stylistic choice ingrained in them since they first learned the language, making the alternative feel fundamentally wrong

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Sql Database CodeFormatting DeveloperHumor CodeStyleGuides NamingConventions

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Anonymous ★ Top Pick I write my SQL keywords in uppercase for the same reason I use `sudo` - I need the database to know I'm not making a request, I'm issuing a command

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

I write my SQL keywords in uppercase for the same reason I use `sudo` - I need the database to know I'm not making a request, I'm issuing a command
Anonymous

I write SQL in ALL CAPS so that when EXPLAIN ANALYZE exposes a seq-scan on the 2 TB table, at least the query is shouting in panic with me
Anonymous

The real fear isn't writing SQL in lowercase - it's explaining to the DBA why your 'select * from users where 1=1' query brought down production because you thought case sensitivity only mattered in the WHERE clause, not in your career trajectory
Anonymous

The fear of lowercase SQL is real - it's like we've been conditioned by decades of O'Reilly books and Stack Overflow answers to believe that `SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = 1` will somehow execute differently than `select * from users where id = 1`. Spoiler: the query optimizer doesn't care about your existential dread over case sensitivity, but your code reviewer with 20 years of Oracle experience absolutely does
Anonymous

I uppercase SQL so I can yell at the database without paging SRE - and to avoid Oracle-to-Postgres migrations that create both Users and users when someone quotes an identifier
Anonymous

UPPERCASE for keywords - lowercase is harmless until someone quotes identifiers; then Oracle folds up, Postgres folds down, and your ORM folds the team
Anonymous

UPPERCASE SQL keywords: the only highlighter that survives a DBA's 20-year-old query dump without mercy-kill
@Roman_Millen 5y

Keywords in lowercase, table/column names in uppercase — that's what I prefer.
1. @prkiso 5y
  
  select KITTENS from ANIMALS where no this is just wrong
  
  @Roman_Millen 5y
  
  It might look scary but it's actually helpful for reading the queries in case you don't have a syntax highlight.
  
  @prkiso 5y
  
  SQL is scary anyway. I feel like I'm gonna drop the table and not know
  
  @Roman_Millen 5y
  
  Good thing that SQL queries are often used not directly in sources or DBMS workbench, but in a special console where you can't do anything but "select".
  
  Сифуд Кстолу 5y
  
  or "DROP"
2. Сифуд Кстолу 5y
  
  +1
@Roman_Millen 5y

KITTENS column in ANIMALS table — now this on the other hand is scary 😢
1. @prkiso 5y
  
  Yes it's a zoo with animals for columns and enclosures for rows
@mynameahdeez 5y

DROP DATABASE *
@dellism1 5y

for some reasons database works better if you shout at it
1. @Ra_zor 5y
  
  Well, that's some serious tech, you convinced me
@AmyCupcake 5y

SELECT ROMEO FROM ART WHERE FORE
@ProAbdulrahman 5y

lowercase, because it is easy to read
@ErinIlya 5y

комменчу на русском, я у мамы опасный
1. dev_meme 5y
  
  english only please! warning 1/3 for @ErinIlya
@ErinIlya 5y

commenchy na russskom
1. dev_meme 5y
  
  still not english. don't test me, comrade. warning 2/3 for @ErinIlya
2. Deleted Account 5y
  
  hahaha, "commentator"
@ErinIlya 5y

asd
1. dev_meme 5y
  
  👀
2. dev_meme 5y
  
  *sad, I assume
@Roman_Millen 5y

Whatever. As long as keywords and names differ. It also depends on what config is used for DBMS. For the DB I used not so long ago writing names in caps was the only option.

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The Irrational Fear of Lowercase SQL

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