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Thanks for this very informative interesting write-up, notes such as these are what makes Hacker News so great. I’m curious, what do you think of SQL? I come fr

Thanks for this very informative interesting write-up, notes such as these are what makes Hacker News so great. I’m curious, what do you think of SQL? I come from a finance background was an Excel guru but now prefer PostgreSQl, amazing what you can do with their Windows Functions, Recursive CTEs, Lateral Join Set Functions, Custom Aggregates, also has Python and R built in. I don’t like PowerBi too disjointed from Excel and v weak SQL support why does Microsft have to keep imposing their own languages on us instead of alloing us to use far superior SQL, would be awesome to have SQL in Excel (python Exel wings offers this but limited and clunky)Main proble with PowerBi for me is you can’t update the database without obtuse hacks.

gaius 9y ago
You can run R in SQL Server and Excel has the Data Model/PowerPivot now.
tyfon 9y ago
I used to work in a large international bank where SAS was the standard and while it can be used you can really feel the age of the technology. Now I work in a startup bank and since I could chose the tools we're now running PostgreSQL/R/Python (RStudio and Spyder). Lately the marketing department are also using Tableu. It's another world when it comes to output and efficiency of the team I lead compared to using enterprise guide.
- lulmerchant 9y ago
  Where I currently work, we teach all of our BAs (regardless of how technical they start out), to use SQL (with redash), and some of them use Tableu. As this approach has been running quite smoothly for us, would SAS offer anything that a team like ours might be missing?