Unlearning What No Longer Works: The Hardest Part of Growth

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

For six months, I wrote every SQL query like this:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = 123;

SELECT star. Get all the columns. Always.

My reasoning: “I might need all the data. Better to have it than query again.”

This worked fine for my bootcamp projects. Tables had 5 columns. Performance didn’t matter.

Then I joined a company with real production data.

My first code review:

Senior Engineer: “Why are you selecting all columns?”

Growth-Mindset on Rafiul Alam