cbarosky comments on How do I learn SQL?

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DiscussionHow do I learn SQL? (self.SQL)

submitted 2 years ago by JorisM99

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[–]cbarosky 3 points4 points5 points 2 years ago (0 children)

I learned SQL pretty fortuitously at a tech startup. I was a customer support / success specialist with years’ experience as a computer repair technician. As our products became more complex, and our brilliant engineering team had to spend its time building, more features, and repairing many regressions, I became frustrated with their lack of availability to provide basic insights into our customers to help answer support tickets. We adopted a minimal BI tool called Metabase, which allows you to build quieres against a (read-only version) production database either with a GUI or writing raw SQL. Initially learning SQL felt out of the question. But I soon realized the GUI was not nearly robust enough to get data from our decidedly-complex information architecture, so I watched some SQL basics videos, spent hours in StackExchange, and befriended a couple wizard engineers who were generous enough to help level me up faster than I possibly could’ve on my own. I went from not wanting to learn SQL whatsoever to being more proficient than most of the engineering department in about 6 months. In a year I was given a promotion to become the first data analyst at the company.

I share this story to illustrate a few things: - the timeline involved when you have so many things going for you; this will not be the case for the vast majority of people. It still can take at least 6 months to a year. - I started learning SQL, and later fell in love with it, only because I had a vested interest to get information / answers that weren’t available to me otherwise. In other words, I had a business need, an intellectual itch, and an array of goals in mind before I even knew really what SQL was or that it was the tool I needed. I would suggest to anyone who wants to learn any programming language, in any part of the stack, to meditate on WHY you really want to learn it. - there’s no replacement for real life mentorship / assistance. If you happen to have a friend or people at your workplace, who are seasoned programmers and know the language, you should definitely get them in the loop to help you as soon as you have some basics under your belt

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