"STORY: A friend loaned me this book to show her, so I gave it to her and asked her to try it. If she read the first 10 pages and it was boring, she should stop. If she liked it, she could keep it until she was done. She opened it on the spot and was 20 pages in before she realized she still was standing in the middle of our kitchen. One day later, she was finished and said it was "cool" and that she liked it.

I asked her if she learned anything or if it was just a story and she started talking. She said a little bit and talked about tables and how information is stored in columns and rows. She talked in a 9 year old's language and vocabulary, but basically explained to me the concept and benefits of centralized data stored in a single database. She made a couple other comments whose specifics I can't remember, but clearly articulated database ideas. It was somewhat surreal hearing these things come from a 3rd grader's mouth. She didn't feel like she had learned very much. I told her I probably could count on my fingers how many people at my work (300 people total - manufacturing industry, not IT) knew more about databases than she did, based on what she had finished telling me."

Original Thread

2019-07-12