In 2013 I wrote a small list of phrases developers used too often. Twelve years later, the phrases have changed and the wincing has not. Here are ten I hear every week, and what each one usually means.
What AI Thinks a DBA Does All Day
What AI thinks a DBA does all day is a calm, orderly, deeply reassuring Tuesday. It has backups, documentation, proactive health checks, and apparently a door that closes. I asked. Then I wrote down my actual Tuesday. Its day has six items. Mine has thirteen.
AI Bubble: I Hope It Pops
The AI bubble I hope will pop is the one I am standing inside, holding a book, a consulting practice, and the survival instincts of a cartoon coyote who has just looked down.
Your Second Skill Was Never a Parachute
Your second skill was never a parachute, and the proof is six hundred years old. Understanding why that effort failed is the clearest way to understand what is happening to our own careers today.
Beautiful T-SQL Queries: Three Could Delete the Company
AI writes genuinely beautiful T-SQL. Aligned, aliased, commented, indented like a textbook. Beautiful has never meant correct, but we have spent thirty years treating it as a signed affidavit.
AI Slop: The Literary Offenses of the Machine
How to spot AI slop, discovered the hard way, over four hundred entries, in a dressing gown, at two in the morning, and ending in a place I did not care for.
A Better Fire Alarm Is Still a Fire
A better fire alarm is still a fire. Many SQL Server incidents I get called about were preventable with controls already available in the client’s environment. Here is the audit I wish had been run before the pager rang, complete with the T-SQL.