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Zach Wilson

@Zachly • 51,504 subscribers

Founder @ https://t.co/CWvLDHU2Lx $80k/month | https://t.co/F5VqLpyMZn $5k/month | ADHD | 10 yrs big data experience | ex @meta, @netflix, and @airbnb

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Since so many companies are adopting Databricks, data engineers and AI engineers should be learning the platform In this 5-week course, we cover all the things you need to learn: - Spark, real-time streaming with Delta Live Table and Spark Streaming - Iceberg and Delta table and lake house architecture - AgentBricks and building AI agents to automate processes - tying it all together with high-quality data and guarantees! You'll have access to an entire paid Databricks workspace! You can join at right now

Since so many companies are adopting Databricks, data engineers and AI engineers should be learning the platform In this 5-week course, we cover all the things you need to learn: - Spark, real-time streaming with Delta Live Table and Spark Streaming - Iceberg and Delta table and lake house architecture - AgentBricks and building AI agents to automate processes - tying it all together with high-quality data and guarantees! You'll have access to an entire paid Databricks workspace! You can join at right now

12,394 views • 25 days ago

SQL has levels to it: - level 1 SELECT, FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, LIMIT Master these basic keywords and you’ll be well on your way to mastering SQL. - level 2 Mastering JOINs: Most common JOINs: INNER and LEFT Less common JOINs: FULL OUTER Joins you should avoid almost always: RIGHT and CROSS JOIN Mastering common table expressions (CTEs). The WITH keyword defines a CTE which you can imagine as a “variable” that you can query later. Using variables like this you can master algorithm techniques like recursion, breadth first search and more! CTEs also make your SQL much more readable and make your coworkers hate you less compared to nested sub queries. - level 3 Mastering window functions Window functions have 3 pieces: The function (i.e. SUM, RANK, AVG) The over clause to start the window The window definition which has 3 pieces: - how to split the window up with PARTITION BY - how to order the window with ORDER BY - how to restrict the window size with ROWS clause (useful for rolling monthly averages) Understand RANK vs DENSE_RANK vs ROW_NUMBER, I have been asked this in interviews a million times. - level 4 You understand table scans, b-tree indexes, and partitioning schemes to increase performance. Doing something like COUNT(CASE WHEN) is much better than doing multiple queries with a UNION ALL. UNION ALL is terrible for all sorts of reasons that I don’t want to get into in this post. B-trees indexes allow for efficient scanning of data in the WHERE clause. Use explain plans to understand if an index is actually being used or not! Partitioning is similar to indexes except it’s a “poor mans” index. It just keeps data in specific folders and skips the folders that don’t include the data I question. What else did I miss for mastering SQL?

SQL has levels to it: - level 1 SELECT, FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, LIMIT Master these basic keywords and you’ll be well on your way to mastering SQL. - level 2 Mastering JOINs: Most common JOINs: INNER and LEFT Less common JOINs: FULL OUTER Joins you should avoid almost always: RIGHT and CROSS JOIN Mastering common table expressions (CTEs). The WITH keyword defines a CTE which you can imagine as a “variable” that you can query later. Using variables like this you can master algorithm techniques like recursion, breadth first search and more! CTEs also make your SQL much more readable and make your coworkers hate you less compared to nested sub queries. - level 3 Mastering window functions Window functions have 3 pieces: The function (i.e. SUM, RANK, AVG) The over clause to start the window The window definition which has 3 pieces: - how to split the window up with PARTITION BY - how to order the window with ORDER BY - how to restrict the window size with ROWS clause (useful for rolling monthly averages) Understand RANK vs DENSE_RANK vs ROW_NUMBER, I have been asked this in interviews a million times. - level 4 You understand table scans, b-tree indexes, and partitioning schemes to increase performance. Doing something like COUNT(CASE WHEN) is much better than doing multiple queries with a UNION ALL. UNION ALL is terrible for all sorts of reasons that I don’t want to get into in this post. B-trees indexes allow for efficient scanning of data in the WHERE clause. Use explain plans to understand if an index is actually being used or not! Partitioning is similar to indexes except it’s a “poor mans” index. It just keeps data in specific folders and skips the folders that don’t include the data I question. What else did I miss for mastering SQL?

34,452 views • 3 months ago

Databricks engineers can make $180k per year! Thats why I’m releasing a free Databricks boot camp on August 3rd! We’ll be covering all the essentials needed to be a great AI data engineer: - Day 1: Lakebase and production database systems - Day 2: Context engineering and vector databases - Day 3: AI agents on Agent Bricks Join the boot camp for free here:

Databricks engineers can make $180k per year! Thats why I’m releasing a free Databricks boot camp on August 3rd! We’ll be covering all the essentials needed to be a great AI data engineer: - Day 1: Lakebase and production database systems - Day 2: Context engineering and vector databases - Day 3: AI agents on Agent Bricks Join the boot camp for free here:

11,627 views • 1 month ago

SQL has levels to it: - level 1 SELECT, FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, LIMIT Master these basic keywords and you’ll be well on your way to mastering SQL. - level 2 Mastering JOINs: Most common JOINs: INNER and LEFT Less common JOINs: FULL OUTER Joins you should avoid almost always: RIGHT and CROSS JOIN Mastering common table expressions (CTEs). The WITH keyword defines a CTE which you can imagine as a “variable” that you can query later. Using variables like this you can master algorithm techniques like recursion, breadth first search and more! CTEs also make your SQL much more readable and make your coworkers hate you less compared to nested sub queries. - level 3 Mastering window functions Window functions have 3 pieces: The function (i.e. SUM, RANK, AVG) The over clause to start the window The window definition which has 3 pieces: - how to split the window up with PARTITION BY - how to order the window with ORDER BY - how to restrict the window size with ROWS clause (useful for rolling monthly averages) Understand RANK vs DENSE_RANK vs ROW_NUMBER, I have been asked this in interviews a million times. - level 4 You understand table scans, b-tree indexes, and partitioning schemes to increase performance. Doing something like COUNT(CASE WHEN) is much better than doing multiple queries with a UNION ALL. UNION ALL is terrible for all sorts of reasons that I don’t want to get into in this post. B-trees indexes allow for efficient scanning of data in the WHERE clause. Use explain plans to understand if an index is actually being used or not! Partitioning is similar to indexes except it’s a “poor mans” index. It just keeps data in specific folders and skips the folders that don’t include the data I question. What else did I miss for mastering SQL?

SQL has levels to it: - level 1 SELECT, FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, LIMIT Master these basic keywords and you’ll be well on your way to mastering SQL. - level 2 Mastering JOINs: Most common JOINs: INNER and LEFT Less common JOINs: FULL OUTER Joins you should avoid almost always: RIGHT and CROSS JOIN Mastering common table expressions (CTEs). The WITH keyword defines a CTE which you can imagine as a “variable” that you can query later. Using variables like this you can master algorithm techniques like recursion, breadth first search and more! CTEs also make your SQL much more readable and make your coworkers hate you less compared to nested sub queries. - level 3 Mastering window functions Window functions have 3 pieces: The function (i.e. SUM, RANK, AVG) The over clause to start the window The window definition which has 3 pieces: - how to split the window up with PARTITION BY - how to order the window with ORDER BY - how to restrict the window size with ROWS clause (useful for rolling monthly averages) Understand RANK vs DENSE_RANK vs ROW_NUMBER, I have been asked this in interviews a million times. - level 4 You understand table scans, b-tree indexes, and partitioning schemes to increase performance. Doing something like COUNT(CASE WHEN) is much better than doing multiple queries with a UNION ALL. UNION ALL is terrible for all sorts of reasons that I don’t want to get into in this post. B-trees indexes allow for efficient scanning of data in the WHERE clause. Use explain plans to understand if an index is actually being used or not! Partitioning is similar to indexes except it’s a “poor mans” index. It just keeps data in specific folders and skips the folders that don’t include the data I question. What else did I miss for mastering SQL?

79,681 views • 1 year ago

Here’s how I would learn data engineering in 2025: 1. The basics: - learn SQL — SELECT, FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, JOIN, HAVING, etc - learn Python — data structures: objects, arrays, tuples, namedtuples — algorithms: recursion, loops 2. Intermediate - learn distributed compute — pick up PySpark or Snowflake or BigQuery - learn data make architecture — pick up iceberg or delta lake - learn job orchestration — pick up Airflow or Mage - learn data quality — pick up Great expectations 3. Advanced - learn the data modeling techniques — one big table vs kimball vs Inmon vs data vault techniques - learn machine learning features and vector databases — pick up pinecone and how to fine tune LLMs with high quality data My newsletter has a deeper roadmap here:

Here’s how I would learn data engineering in 2025: 1. The basics: - learn SQL — SELECT, FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, JOIN, HAVING, etc - learn Python — data structures: objects, arrays, tuples, namedtuples — algorithms: recursion, loops 2. Intermediate - learn distributed compute — pick up PySpark or Snowflake or BigQuery - learn data make architecture — pick up iceberg or delta lake - learn job orchestration — pick up Airflow or Mage - learn data quality — pick up Great expectations 3. Advanced - learn the data modeling techniques — one big table vs kimball vs Inmon vs data vault techniques - learn machine learning features and vector databases — pick up pinecone and how to fine tune LLMs with high quality data My newsletter has a deeper roadmap here:

29,420 views • 1 year ago

Here's how I would learn data engineering basics in 2025: - Find a data source you care about (examples: gaming APIs, stock market, web scraping, etc) - Use Python to interact and ingest your source. Initially just write the data to a CSV. - Setup an account with Snowflake or Google BigQuery. - update your Python script to load a table in Snowflake/BigQuery - schedule your script with CRON in the cloud with a service like Heroku. - build aggregations and visualizations on top of your ingested data Only thing this misses is data quality and complex job orchestration which you can learn later! How would you learn data engineering nowadays?

Here's how I would learn data engineering basics in 2025: - Find a data source you care about (examples: gaming APIs, stock market, web scraping, etc) - Use Python to interact and ingest your source. Initially just write the data to a CSV. - Setup an account with Snowflake or Google BigQuery. - update your Python script to load a table in Snowflake/BigQuery - schedule your script with CRON in the cloud with a service like Heroku. - build aggregations and visualizations on top of your ingested data Only thing this misses is data quality and complex job orchestration which you can learn later! How would you learn data engineering nowadays?

20,412 views • 1 year ago

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