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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

#21

Post by ehnto »

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…

Normally if you need a guru it's because you are at a level of SQL complexity that can't be navigated without intuitive knowledge of SQL and it's various nuances.

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#24

Post by zappo2938 »

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?

https://www.sqlteaching.com/

https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-visual-explanation-of-sql-jo...

https://pgexercises.com/

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#25

Post by sooheon »

whynotminot wrote: post #16
sooheon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but I'd say helping out and saving time is just being useful, not "seeming" useful. I suspect like any domain, SQL and DBs have a fractal of complexity, so reading is different from writing is different from architecting, and expertise is useful at each step.

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#27

Post by iblaine »

I recently had a candidate that had very good Scala skills and very poor SQL skills. Despite Scala and spark being powerful, you can over complicate a solution in those languages that could otherwise be easily solved in SQL. That’s interesting to me because I see SQL as a fundamental tool that you build on top of and some people these days seems to skip it.

Re: SQL: One of the most valuable skills

#28

Post by qaq »

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…

well it might be a bit too late when you start googling if you didn't have a person on the team that understands your database well. I am always surprised to see that very few people care enough to learn about isolation levels for example.
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