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No, I am adamant that "sequel" is worse than "ess que ell". Most people who learned SQL on their own already call it "ess que ell" (a lot of my colleagues at work), because they never had a greybeard over their shoulder saying it be called "sequel". There's zero benefit in insisting it be called "sequel" other than to introduce an additional bump for people learning it all over the world. Reject sequel, join SQL.

Also, anecdotally it seems like the "sequel" preference is relegated to the old-timer Oracle and SQL Server crowd, whereas the newer Postgres/MySQL/SQLite crowd prefer to call it "ess que ell" (simply because it's the obvious way to say it).



Never touched Oracle or SQL server. Worked in startups with MySQL or Postgres and BigQuery/Snowflake/Redshift. It has always been “sequel” in all the startups I’ve worked at. I think it just one of those things.


Plenty of companies I've been at using Postgres/MySQL/MariaDB that call it sequel. It's a little bit of a mouthful to spell out SQL every time.


At university we pronounced it ‘sequel’. Anyway, the benefit is the ease of pronunciation.

It’s like .JPG files: sure, you can call them ‘Jay Pee Gee’ files, but it’s easier to call them ‘Jay-Pegs’.


That format is actually properly called JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), and the extension '.jpeg' is commonly used on *nix OSes. Using '.jpg' only became the standard on DOS/Windows in conformance with the old 8.3 filename constraint -- the same reason HTML files are often '.htm' rather than '.html' on Windows.


Similar to .GIF, which I prefer to pronounce "Gif" instead of "Jee Ai Ef".


it’s pronounced “Gif”.


I learned it by reading and so it will be pronounced forever in my head as something like “skwul”. Maybe that could be the compromise?




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