the tragedy is we are gonna have a generation of "engineers" (if we can call them engineers) who won't know how to properly use tools such as Cassandra, ScyllaDB, FoundationDB etc.

excellent db's meant for very specific use cases. abused by resume driven mercenaries - but used with precision by missionaries.

Most devs don't understand how to use a traditional SQL style RDBMS appropriately either. Especially with support for JSON encoded fields, you can do a lot of things that break traditional normalization but have a massive impact on performance and scalability. The massive increase in hardware alone has shifted the balance a lot.

There's still lots of room for specialization tuned database options like Cassandra, Scylla, etc. I do wish more developers had a lot more awareness of how/what/where these things are appropriate.

FWIW, you see similar efforts to shove GraphQL into application stacks and environments where you gain very little benefit. Often and especially when you have the same people developing the app and managing DevOps with smaller teams.

Not if I can help it!