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Comment by marmada | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of Stockholm syndrome in this thread / maybe low expectations.

Many people are saying SQL isn't that hard to learn but as someone who is new to SQL, I disagree.

It takes a max of 15 minutes to understand basic JavaScript/Go/Python primitives and write a program. SQL on the other hand seems much more complex. I might as well be reading Haskell or Lisp. At least those languages are consistent.

SQL does not feel like a language where I can learn a few primitives really quickly and compose them together.

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People who learn the nitty-gritty details and all the gotchas and tricks in the book, appear to be experts and their job positions depend on it. It's all a bit "ludditic", people confuse this familiarity with arcane commands and proficiency with real expertise and deep knowledge. When you challenge that, you challenge their existence. Knowing how null behaves (Null = null vs null is null) is one of those shibboleths that differentiates an sql wizard from a lowly commoner, like knowing all the nuances of prototype inheritance makes one a true JS champion. These people charge a pretty penny to optimize badly written sql queries and fix your joins. And you want to take that away from them.

At the other side of the fence we have JS/TS experts writing inscrutable one-liners by chaining 15 lodash commands.

Having tried both SQL and the approach of using a programming language + framework of the day, I prefer SQL for data manipulation. It's far easier to troubleshoot, scale, hand-over or maintain in the long run.

> It takes a max of 15 minutes to understand basic JavaScript/Go/Python primitives and write a program.

Basic SQL can be learnt just as quickly, if not quicker, I'd say, as it is close to english in comparison with other languages. IMO the hardest parts are stuff like pivots and cursors, along with performance problems in complex queries.

I personally wrote my first few queries within 30 minutes of starting to learn it.[1] Of course it wasn't particularily good SQL, but workable enough.

[1]Basically got an apprenticeship and was almost instantly told to write some queries.

Sorry, but what is hard to understand about

SELECT <columns> FROM <table> WHERE <column> = <value>

Since it's so easy, I think you won't have a problem with any of the questions on this page: https://www.toptal.com/sql/interview-questions

Correct, but I have years of experience with SQL so I feel like I'm cheating a bit.

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