Without aliases makes each part understandable without having to jump around and hold extra context in your head: SELECT staff.first_name FROM staff

Without aliases makes each part understandable without having to jump around and hold extra context in your head: SELECT staff.first_name FROM staff INNER JOIN students ON student.mentor_id = staff.staff_num; Whether or not you agree on the exact number [0], humans have limited working memory and aliases that don't group up concepts use it up unnecessarily. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Pl...