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SQL: One of the most valuable skills

craigkerstiens.com

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Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#11

Post by nicoburns »

whynotminot wrote: post #6

Having a solid working toolkit of SQL knowledge really will make you seem very useful on a team. I do say "seem" though, in that if you weren't around it's not like the team would fail without you. It's not hard to learn SQL or Google around for a little bit to figure out what you're trying to accomplish. Sort of like that one guy on your team who's a wizard at regular expressions. He seems like a life saver in the m…

Hmm... I'm not sure. I've seen people take hours or even days (in the case of more junior developers) trying to sort out these kind of issues. It's pretty helpful if you have (or are) someone who can waltz over and fix it in a couple of minutes.

Complex git problems are another one that can really throw people sometimes.

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#12

Post by sooheon »

whynotminot wrote: post #6

Having a solid working toolkit of SQL knowledge really will make you seem very useful on a team. I do say "seem" though, in that if you weren't around it's not like the team would fail without you. It's not hard to learn SQL or Google around for a little bit to figure out what you're trying to accomplish. Sort of like that one guy on your team who's a wizard at regular expressions. He seems like a life saver in the m…

Speaking as not an SQL guru -- isn't this true for every skill? Theoretically anyone can figure anything out with enough time, the value is of specialists having better mental maps for what solutions apply, when you need them.

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#13

Post by whynotminot »

nicoburns wrote: post #11
whynotminot wrote: post #6

Having a solid working toolkit of SQL knowledge really will make you seem very useful on a team. I do say "seem" though, in that if you weren't around it's not like the team would fail without you. It's not hard to learn SQL or Google around for a little bit to figure out what you're trying to accomplish. Sort of like that one guy on your team who's a wizard at regular expressions. He seems like a life saver in the m…

Hmm... I'm not sure. I've seen people take hours or even days (in the case of more junior developers) trying to sort out these kind of issues. It's pretty helpful if you have (or are) someone who can waltz over and fix it in a couple of minutes. Complex git problems are another one that can really throw people sometimes.

Oh it's definitely helpful! And it's something I should finally take the time to dedicate a weekend to shoring up my knowledge.

Just every time I have to deal with a sql database, my lack of knowledge (at least to this point) has never been a show stopper. It takes me a little more time than a real pro to get my statements figured out, but it's rarely so complex to require canvasing the shop for a true expert.

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#14

Post by ehnto »

emilsedgh wrote: post #5
Hippocrates wrote: post #2

I would say the same about bash.

Products in production environments aren't relying on Bash that much anymore. Nowhere near how they depend on SQL databases.

I have never seen a production environment not use bash for part of the deploy process, if not all of it. I have seen a lot of prod environments.

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#15

Post by tigerlily »

duck wrote: post #10
tigerlily wrote: post #3

> Because so few actually know SQL well you can seem more elite than you actually are. Thank you Craig, I'm convinced. Anyone know where best to begin learning SQL?

There are a lot of great free resources out there, but I had recently shared https://sqlbolt.com with a friend that wanted to learn SQL and she found it useful.

Wow, this is fun, thank you! I completed the Lesson 1 exercises first try!

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#16

Post by whynotminot »

sooheon wrote: post #12
whynotminot wrote: post #6

Having a solid working toolkit of SQL knowledge really will make you seem very useful on a team. I do say "seem" though, in that if you weren't around it's not like the team would fail without you. It's not hard to learn SQL or Google around for a little bit to figure out what you're trying to accomplish. Sort of like that one guy on your team who's a wizard at regular expressions. He seems like a life saver in the m…

Speaking as not an SQL guru -- isn't this true for every skill? Theoretically anyone can figure anything out with enough time, the value is of specialists having better mental maps for what solutions apply, when you need them.

> isn't this true for every skill?

But you're implying then that all skills are equally hard to get a handle on, and that's just not true.

Working with sql is fairly simple even for those who aren't experts. But (as the article mentions) it's not always something a dev has done before or consistently so they'll often feel relieved if there's someone who's confident about it around.

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#17

Post by dhbradshaw »

SQL is nice on a surface level and helpful in practice.

Having a working intuition for relational databases is valuable on a deep level. I mean having a sense of how to organize the tables, what sizes are large and small, when to add what kind of index and what the size and speed limits are likely to be for a given data structure. That's extremely valuable.

BTW, we're preparing to move a postgres database that's a few TB from Heroku to AWS RDS. The catch is that we can't afford more than a few minutes of downtime. If this is in your wheelhouse, reach out! We'd like to talk.

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#19

Post by GolDDranks »

I consider myself functional, but not proficient in SQL. Is there a reliable and easy way to assess one's skills in SQL? I feel that most of the new things I learn about SQL these days are database specific. I wonder whether I'm missing out on something, or do I already have the "core" SQL knowledge down, and everything else is special cases?
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