I 100% agree with this.
Another trick is *if possible* add audit columns at the time of creating/designing the database, i.e.:
CreatedOn
CreatedBy
LastModifiedOn
LastModifiedBy
This could prevent people from using Select *
, because generally we don't display such information anywhere, and also it will be useful someday to find/fix issues (or atleast you can point a finger at someone).
And for the lazy people, if you want a list of columns from a table with a lot of columns, use SQL Server Management Studio and right click on the table from Object Explorer, and "Select Top 1000 Rows", which will give you the proper Select * From table
statement. Modify it and use it.