Totally agree. I believe the set theory thinking one gains with SQL helps to deal with tables(databases) in any framework.

SQL can become super tricky as well (depending on the context), say you want to get the list of users who are active for 'n' consecutive days from a dataset that has daily user activity for an year. It's not very difficult but needs some effort.

However, for a data science beginner, SQL is the best place to start.