Yesterday I was discussing with a "hobby" programmer (I myself am a professional programmer). We came across some of his work, and he said he always queries all columns in his database (even on/in production server/code).
I tried to convince him not to do so, but wasn't so successful yet. In my opinion a programmer should only query what is actually needed for the sake of "prettiness", efficiency and traffic. Am I mistaken with my view?
Best Answer
Think about what you're getting back, and how you bind those to variables in your code.
Now think what happens when someone updates the table schema to add (or remove) a column, even one you're not directly using.
Using select * when you're typing queries by hand is fine, not when you're writing queries for code.