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A comment on Modern Data Practice and the SQL Tradition. Parent comment

Re:Modern Data Practice and the SQL Tradition by minimaxir on Friday November 08, 2019 @10:57AM (#21483409)
Data science, unfortunately, is often considered a buzzword because it varies so significantly from org to org, and often there's a lot of No True Scotsman arguments resulting from that which makes everyone unhappy. But at minimum, every data scientist needs to know SQL; there's no way around it.

I wrote a full blog post ranting about the disparity between expectation vs. reality for data scientists a year ago: https://minimaxir.com/2018/10/data-science-protips/

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Re:Modern Data Practice and the SQL Tradition by throwawayjava on Friday November 08, 2019 @01:59PM (#21485489)
> But at minimum, every data scientist needs to know SQL; there's no way around it.

Is it no longer the case that every programmer has to know SQL? I have always and still do consider knowledge of SQL a minimum requisite for any programming job...

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Re:Modern Data Practice and the SQL Tradition by jkaptur on Friday November 08, 2019 @02:44PM (#21485963)
It is not the case that every programmer has to know SQL (if it ever was).

Programming is now such a big field that plenty of people will go their whole careers without knowledge that's foundational for other programmers - whether it be SQL, linear algebra, memory management, distributed systems, ...

In a way, it's very cool. Instead of a single-dimensional "how good a programmer are you", we've got a multidimensional space. That, naturally, yields a lot more interesting corners, like, say, what could be invented by someone who knows a lot about databases and GPUs.

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Re:Modern Data Practice and the SQL Tradition by zild3d on Friday November 08, 2019 @03:47PM (#21486554)
There are plenty of programming jobs that have no need for SQL, it's just easy to forget how broad the field is. There was never a need for SQL when I was programming microcontrollers, or DSP work in python/matlab
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Re:Modern Data Practice and the SQL Tradition by minimaxir on Friday November 08, 2019 @03:00PM (#21486115)
Granted, SQL is an extremely useful skill for programmers, but there are use cases (e.g. front-end dev) where it's not required.
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