SQL Basics
Querying Data
Filtering Data
Joining Tables
SQL Functions
Modifying Data
Defining Data
SQL Testing
Here are some facts …
- SQL is old, SQL is 47 years old, that is 14 years older than me 🙄. SQL is the grandaddy of the programming world!
- There are over 700 computer programming languages, that you could learn.
- You might hear about the NoSQL movement around 2005, where everyone said that NoSQL will Kill SQL Databases.
You might ask yourself…
- Why are we still using SQL?
- Why didn’t SQL die out like many other old languages like Basic, Cobol, Pascal, and many more?
- Should I learn SQL in 2021?
The main reason SQL is still around is that it still works and does its job – you can’t ask for more than that!
#1 - SQL is one of the most-used languages
SQL is one of the most popular technologies in the entire tech industry!
Stack Overflow publishes an annual survey showing the community new trends and statistics about developers and technologies.
In the chart below is the most used technologies from StackOverflow’s 2021 developer survey, you can see that SQL ranks as the fourth most commonly used programming language amount all developers.
This shows us, that SQL is still in trend, at the top of the list, and widely spread.
#2 - SQL is in High Demand
 Most companies in all industries (banking, healthcare, automotive, etc.) use some kind of SQL-based database to store data, and that means that SQL skills will be always needed to create, manage, analyze, and understand the data of any company.
Once you have SQL skills, you hold the key to many opportunities.
The good news is that hundreds of thousands of companies are looking for developers with SQL skills right now as you read this.
Let’s do a quick check on a job platform like Indeed and search using the keyword SQL. The result shows that a total of about 167.000 jobs are hiring SQL developers or require SQL as a qualification. It depends on your country, for example in Germany there are about 30.000 open positions.
As you can see, SQL skills are in demand, and the job market is increasingly demanding SQL skills as data analysis becomes an increasingly important part of many jobs.
#3 - SQL is used everywhere
In projects that work with data, such as data mining, data visualization, data engineering, data analytics, data science, etc., can implement various Big Data tools and programming languages.
Most of these tools and programming languages have to connect to databases to get companies’ data and they offer components and modules to write down SQL statements.
This makes SQL Skills is very important in order to work effectively with them.
For example, in data visualization tools such as Tableau, sometimes you might write SQL Statements to pull data from sources.
An additional example is stream processing like KAFKA offers SQL interfaces to make the technology accessible by those that aren’t comfortable with Kafka. An example is ksqlDB offering from confluent.
#4 - Easy to Learn
Unlike other programming languages, SQL is quite simple to learn and an intuitive easy-to-learn language.
This is because SQL syntax is based on common English words and is easy for people to read even if you have no programming experience and you are IT beginner.
SQL manages to perfectly hide all complicated processes from you, so you don’t have to worry about the details, that’s why SQL is also a high-level programming language and makes it very attractive for many developers to use.
It is another reason why you should learn SQL as your first programming language.
In Short
SQL has the best combination as a programming language it is easy to learn and developers with such skills are in very high demand. This makes learning SQL always a smart move and one of the most impactful career improvements any IT-developer can unlock.
Learn SQL. It’s well worth it. 😎
