[turnerc]

From the study:

> Participants wrote their notes and answers on paper, which they showed in front of the webcam.

Yes it seems they did

[dehrmann]

That's pretty flawed methodology since you'd want to know what problems people encounter in the real world and how quickly they solve them.

[jve]

I mean, who writes queries on paper? And by pressing Execute, SQL will gladly provide error message that the student will, I think, quickly resolve. Is this a contest that measures how well students can write compile-able code without executing it or what?

Moreover, IDE would have helped those students for sure: SQL keywords are highlighted in different color + autocomplete.