Dear Josh,
Thanks for you reply at length.
It helps me understand the "raw" about my suggestion.
Some short comments and joke signs:
> Adding == would cause harm in the following three ways:
> 1) It would impair portability between PostgreSQL and other databases that
> support the SQL standard.
Oracle, M$ and others spend a lot of energy so that what you write for
their tool won't be so easilly portable, thus once you've started with
them, you'll stay forever.
You're arguing that pg should help its "customers" to leave it easilly,
what is quite paradoxical! ;-)
> 3) It would, in my opinion, confuse Java and C coders
I have different classes, and not all classes would be elligible to a '=='
for '=' shorthand (well, I should write long-hand as it is longer;-).
So I partially aggree with your opinion.
> Your Java students would be lulled into a false sense of understanding
> out of the belief that == in PostgreSQL would work exactly like == in
> Java ... when it wouldn't work the same in corner cases.
For the class I have in mind, there are no corner cases, just concepts and
basic practice. They are not going to be db developers, not even computer
professionnals for most of them. I want them to remember that there is
something beside word, powerpoint and excel;-)
> Finally, when your students leave your classroom and need to write a program
> that interfaces with Oracle or SQL Server, then what? They'll look at their
> notebooks from class and try the examples, and get a "syntax error."
Sure. They should have used postgresql ;-)
> From my perspective, it is better to teach a student nothing at all than
> to teach them something which is wrong.
"Formation" is what you need to get a job.
"Education" is what you need as a human being.
We need both...
Have a nice day,
--
Fabien Coelho - coelho@cri.ensmp.fr