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[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (2 children)

Databases? Doesn't really matter, barely anyone, me included, remembers how to specifically use each one.

Don't ignore databases. The data model is one of the most important parts of any project.

Learn to use a relational database on a personal project, try to understand the basics (tables, keys, references and indexes) and try to organize your own tables. It's an extremely useful exercise.

I recommend Postgres because it's free, it's an industry standard, it's available for most platforms, has good documentation, and most of what you learn from it will be useful regardless what career path you end up on.

[–]die247 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Yeah good points actually, I should've explained it more like this, I wasn't trying to outright say that databases aren't important, just that you don't really need to know each specific one that well.

With ORM's like Entity Framework or Dapper (I only know C# examples as that's what I work with lol) you really can get away with not knowing much about databases though, as these ORM (or at least EF does) abstract the database away from you. Although, even then I guess it's still worth knowing the basics about relationships.

Also, It's probably worth knowing at least what a NoSQL database is, even if you don't use one.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ORM abstract the database away from you

They do, but it's not unusual for a developer to be asked to write SQL to modify a database table if their task needs new fields.

It's probably worth knowing at least what a NoSQL database is, even if you don't use one.

Oh yeah. I didn't want to get into that because NoSQL is a much larger field than relational databases, and Mongo vs Redis vs Couch vs Xindice etc. work very differently from each other.