Readable SQL as a kindness to your future self

We spend an entire evening in SQL Foundations Intensive on naming and boundary lines between CTEs. It is not glamorous, yet it is where most teams win back review time.

Participants bring anonymized snippets from work when policy allows. We practice rewriting them without changing results, then compare explain plans to prove equivalence.

The exercise surfaces how often readability issues hide real risks, such as accidental cross joins masked by formatting. We document those moments in a shared glossary the cohort keeps.

Graduates tell us the habit sticks because it is framed as operational hygiene, not personal style debates.