I think they are. I learned to code running an old (hand written) forum as a kid (MySQL + PHP) I tend to use postgresql and python now days but my mind is heavily trained to use that relational core and when NoSQL became popular it was so annoying to see the “hackers” in my hometown writing slow systems in mongo and JS because they never were introduced to relational dbs and thought they were becoming deprecated.

I’m glad that phase has passed and glad nosql has its place as a key value store (though I’m sure the younger hacker scene likely still relies on nosql as it doesn’t take as much effort to spin up a store and get results; in contrast you need to think ahead about what tables you create and how they relate to each other.)

I don't get that. Databases underlie everything. It's foundational.