SQL: One of the most valuable skills - Craig Kerstiens

I admit it. I suffered from an “algebra narcoleptic syndrome” during my relational database lessons at University (1996 circa).

Ok it is a fake disease. But it was so real on these days.

I was unable to avoid sleeping. I learned to love SQL after some years and now I think SQL is the most powerful, direct and useful stuff you can learn.

SQL is the faster way to write a specification to send to a remote team: it is very compact, very precise and you cannot “get it wrong” easily. If you need to write a tech specification, try it. A not-so-senior guy can understand how to implement a simple CRUD with little/no explanation by your side: just provide a bunch of tables.

SQL is declarative, and the same data model can be accessed from more then one application. You can migrate a system keeping the same database, for instance. A Joy for interop or microservices.

Some companies use it as a very basic integration layer inside various part of their infrastructure.

SQL is 50 years old, and was a very high priced product in 1980. Now SQLite offers powerful construct like UPSERT, windowing functions and indexes as embedded database. So even your small embedded Phone can enjoy entity-relations! In fact iPhone manages SMS with SQLite.

It was a joy to find someone else thinking the same:

Regardless of what role you are in SQL will find a way to make your life easier. Today as a product manager it’s key for me to look at data, analyze how effective we’re being on the product front, and shape the product roadmap. If we just shipped a new feature, the data on whether someone has viewed that feature is likely somewhere sitting in a relational database.

Source: SQL: One of the most valuable skills - Craig Kerstiens

SQL is 50 years old, and it was a very high priced product in 1980. Now SQLite offers powerful construct like UPSERT, windowing functions and indexes as embedded database. So even your small embedded Phone can enjoy relations!