Use an index when sorting
When working with a database it is a very common task to retrieve a sorted list of entities. What you might not realize is that this can be a very expensive operation.
I am a programmer from Donegal, Ireland. I enjoy making things on the web and writing about my findings. My hope is that you will find something here that piques your interest and that you will drop me an email to say hi.
I've been programming for 14 years and I am grateful for the life it has afforded me. I do not take it forgranted.
Latest Posts
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http_status_codes table
I've been doing a lot of web scraping for various AI tools. This includes model training, and search functionality. One thing I find myself doing is generating lots of prototypes.
Each prototype requires me to write a new db schema and one thing they share in common is the need for a
http_status_codestable to record the final status response of a web page. You could store the value as an int, or string, or even as json to make it queryable. But I feel taking the time to create and populate a table of the status codes is much more advantageous for querying and indexing. So to help future Brian I have pasted the code used to generate this table below. -
Add generics to MariaDB Node Connector
When working with an instance of a MariaDB database I noticed that the npm package used to connect did not support Typescript generics. This was something I felt I could fix, so I sent in a PR.
All Posts (85)
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2026 - 8 posts
- Use an index when sorting
- http_status_codes table
- Add generics to MariaDB Node Connector
- Modeling Tags in a Postgres schema
- Some useful rsync tips
- Install Temurin JDK on Fedora
- The future of videcoding
- 2026 new year's resolutions
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2025 - 58 posts
- Please don't write code
- Card deck in C
- Hosting this blog
- Advent of code d6
- Advent of code d5
- Advent of code d4
- Advent of code d3
- Advent of code d2
- Advent of code d1
- A year of experiments
- Neovim 0.12 adds vim.pack
- Part-time sheep farmer
- Go install script
- Managers, managers, managers
- mise-en-place
- Generate SQLite table types for Typescript
- Literal templates
- Template strings as a view engine - Part 2
- Template strings as a view engine
- Object field validators in Typescript
- Feature flags db schema
- PostgresSQL full text search
- startswith and endswith
- Stack Overflow is dieing, no wonder
- Trimming strings in c
- Banned from lobste.rs and Hacker News
- Making a StringBuffer in C
- Use Codium not Code
- Get inode type in C
- Handle Spring form errors with JTE
- Add a CSRF token to HTML forms with JTE
- Spring database seeding
- New Lib: Blueprint Factory
- New Lib: Placeholder Image Generator
- Request cache in Spring
- Checking ownership in Spring
- Slurp - A Java task runner
- Using CPU branch prediction in Java
- Using Docker on Linux Mint
- Install OpenJDK on Ubuntu
- Yoda Conditions
- Tower of Hanoi in Java
- AxeRunner
- European Alternatives
- Using a virtual screen size in Raylib
- Using astyle to format C code
- Creating a database dump with SQLite
- Optimise SQLite for Laravel apps
- Backing up an SQLite database
- GameDev in C Part 4: A Snake Clone
- I'm off social media
- GameDev in C Part 3: Drawing a Slime
- Linting is procrastination.
- GameDev in C Part 2: Raylib
- GameDev in C Part 1: Hello World
- Homer's Drinking Bird
- I joined social media
- 2025 new year's resolutions
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2024 - 19 posts
- Setting up PostgreSQL and Lua in Docker
- Rust, the Cunning Wizard
- Partial function implementation
- Chicken Farmer, a Snake clone
- Useful ImageData Methods
- Using the form attribute on buttons
- I wrote a test framework in Julia
- Sensible SQLite defaults
- Prevent pixel art blur on canvas
- Add IF NOT EXISTS to your migrations
- Using a PostgreSQL enum for state
- Conway's Game of Life in Go
- Writing a DB migrator in Go
- Creating a Pong clone using Raylib and Go
- Bit shifting to increase performance
- Generate OG images for blog posts
- One assertion per test please
- Slugs with an ID fallback in Laravel
- Seeding a Laravel DB with Irish Counties