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mattm
sql-style-guide
Data & Databases2019–2023
mattm / sql-style-guide

sql-style-guide

An opinionated guide for writing clean, maintainable SQL.

4Distinct people
4Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
1.1KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

An opinionated guide for writing clean, maintainable SQL.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

Very cool to see you on HN Matt! I know Matt from the data world where his SQL Style Guide[0] was always at odds with the one we maintained at GitLab[1]. :-D Posts like this…

tayloramurphy used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year4 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2019-06-19 17:25:44 UTC to 2023-01-04 22:53:29 UTC.

0122019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

4 sources
I appreciate write-ups like this, but I really disagree with what seems to be the majority that SQL keywords should be uppercase. It’s one of the last uppercase holdovers from the old days. HTML used to be uppercase as well. Lowercase is objectively more readable, easier to type, and editors colorize keywords so they stand out. Uppercase is really not necessary in the 2020s. Check out Matt Mazur’s styleguide (linked in the post) for an alternative that endorses lowercase. He also has a contrasting style on where Boolean operators should go. https://github.com/mattm/sql-style-guide/blob/master/README....
In How I format SQL code

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