Welcome to #FunDataFriday for Wizard Zines

A 3 minute read about a cool data resource.

Today’s #FunDataFriday article is about the amazing technical zines at Wizard Zines.

What Is It?

Wizard zines hosts a collection of awesome programming zines and posters by Julia Evans. The zines cover a wide range of technical topics like Linux, networking, debugging, containers, SQL, Git and more. She has even written some excellent content on career development!

Why Is It Awesome?

The site is awesome because it’s a great resource for technical folks looking to better understand difficult technical topics. The zines and posters cover the key aspects of each technical topic in a friendly, approachable, and memorable way.

After lurking in the free content for a while, I recently bought the “Become a SELECT star!” zine. The zine definitely exceeded my expectations. It covered the basics of how to work with SQL and why the language is structured the way it is. The content was friendly and easy to understand. There were illustrated examples which show very concretely how each topic applies to a real-world example.

For all of my fellow data nerds, this zine has an amazing introduction to SQL window functions! SQL window functions allow you to reference data from records before or after the current record. Window functions are incredibly important when you are trying to do time-based comparisons over very large data sets (ie you need the database to perform the computation for you)! And while, the subject is very important, it can be a bit tricky to understand how it works. The zine did an amazing job explaining how the subject and syntax with excellent examples!

How To Get Started?

Get started today by signing up for the free Saturday comic mailing list. After joining the mailing list you will receive a new fun and educational comic every week. Additionally, visit the wizard zines website to view the full available collection of free and paid zines!

— Written by Laura Ellis (AKA Little Miss Data)