Honestly, if it were not for Venn diagrams, I may have never learned how SQL joins work. It might not be perfect, but if you'd tried to make 16-year-old me understand relational algebra in order to grok how the joins in his Django site were working, he'd have given up before he began.
That's not to say that other ways of illustrating things don't have merit, but broad statements like "say NO to Venn diagrams" just aren't helpful. If people find Venn diagrams a useful tool (and their proliferation indicates they do), I don't see the harm. They didn't stop me going deeper on stuff like relational algebra when I was ready to.
That's not to say that other ways of illustrating things don't have merit, but broad statements like "say NO to Venn diagrams" just aren't helpful. If people find Venn diagrams a useful tool (and their proliferation indicates they do), I don't see the harm. They didn't stop me going deeper on stuff like relational algebra when I was ready to.