▲ | brulard a day ago | |||||||
Your Python / TypeScript etc. argument is a strawman, thats why it sounds absurd. Your arguments would hold better if an average person was good and very quick at learning and memoizing complex new things. I don't know if you work with people like that, but that's definitely not the norm. Even developers know little SQL unless it's their specific focus. In the original comment you said: > I guarantee you, anyone who knows any other language could learn enough SQL to do 99% of what they wanted in a couple of hours. Give it a day of intensive study, and you’d know the rest. It’s just not that complicated. Well your "guarantee" does not hold up. Where I live, every college level developer went through multiple semesters of database courses and yet I don't see these people proficient in SQL. In couple hours? 99% of what they need? Absurd | ||||||||
▲ | sgarland a day ago | parent [-] | |||||||
It's not a strawman, it's reductio ad absurdum. SQL and Python are both languages that are commonly used. It would be (currently; who knows in a few years) laughable if someone said they didn't need to deeply understand Python to be able to correctly write Python at an employable level, modulo experience levels - I don't expect a Junior to know the vagaries of the language, e.g. that bools are aliased to integers. > Even developers know little SQL unless it's their specific focus. Yes, and I believe this to be deeply problematic. We don't generally allow people to use a language they don't understand in production, except for SQL. > Where I live, every college level developer went through multiple semesters of database courses and yet I don't see these people proficient in SQL. That's horrifying. Look, while I would love it if everyone writing SQL knew relational algebra, basic set theory, and the ins and outs of their specific RDBMS implementation, I think the below suffices for the majority of work in web dev:
You're telling me that given a simple educational schema like Northwind Traders, and the documentation for their RDBMS, that someone who already knows a programming language couldn't use the above to figure it out in a fairly short order? | ||||||||
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