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Abraham Lincoln once said this about the written word:
“The written word may be man’s greatest invention. It allows us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn.”
Abe will get no argument from me. For up until very recently, the best way to spread knowledge was to convert it into squiggly markings and put those squiggly markings into newspapers, magazines, and books.
But what about today? What’s the best way to spread knowledge? Sure, newspapers, magazines, and books are still around, and they do a yeoman’s job of getting squiggly markings to the masses. But their heyday as a means of spreading knowledge is clearly over. No, the best way to spread knowledge today is to convert it into bytes and put those bytes into databases.
Like it or not, we are in the age of databases (i.e., Big Data). Want to read the most recent post from your favorite blogger? Your browser will deal with a database. Want to know where the nearest Starbucks is? Your smartphone will deal with a database. Need the latest company sales data for a presentation? Your computer will deal with a database. Every day, billions of thoughts, narratives, statistics, and transactions are converted into bytes and dumped into databases. Knowledge has never been more abundant, and never easier to consume. But here’s the rub. To truly exploit the treasure trove of knowledge being crammed into databases, you can’t just be a consumer of knowledge. You got to be a miner of knowledge. And in order to mine knowledge, you need to converse with databases directly.
Okay, assume for the moment that everything I’ve said thus far is correct. Databases are the mother lode of knowledge, and in order to mine this incredibly valuable resource, you and databases got to become BFFs. If all that is true, then the following is man’s second greatest invention of all-time.
SELECT field1 FROM table1
For those of you who don’t know, the above is a simple “select” statement in a language called Structured Query Language (SQL). SQL is the way humans communicate with databases. Databases are awesome but dumb. They don’t understand English, Spanish, or Mandarin. They only understand SQL. So if you want to get information out of a database on your terms, you got to learn SQL.
Here’s an example of what I mean.
Mrs. Groovy and I truly appreciate the support we get from our friends in the FI community. And we, of course, want to reciprocate. But here’s the problem. How do we know who’s been making the most comments—a crude measure of support? We have a general idea. But how do we know for sure?
The only way to know for sure is to ask the back-end database that houses the data for our blog. So I logged into Bluehost, opened up phpMyAdmin (a database admin tool provided by Bluehost), and wrote an SQL command that spit out the most frequent commenters over the past three months. Here are the results.
Quick aside. If you want the SQL for this data, shoot me an email. I’ll send it to you and you can try it out on your back-end database.
Holy crap! I got to start being nicer to Mr. Wow and Fritz.
SQL Is the New Plastics
A generation ago, young people were urged to think “plastics.” Today, I ascend my soapbox and urge young people to think SQL, especially those young people who are going to spend a good deal of their working lives in a cubicle.
I know this sounds crazy, but you’d be surprised how often SQL comes in handy. I just showed you one example. A little ol’ country blogger using SQL to identify his blog’s biggest supporters. Heck, back in the 90s, I worked for one of the most dysfunctional highway departments in America, and even in that festering swamp of nepotism, politics, and sloth, we had computers and data, and I found numerous opportunities to exploit the power of SQL.
Perhaps the best example of this was our mapping system. Prior to my discovery of SQL, each area foreman got a map book that contained every road in the entire municipality. It was the size of a phone book. The only problem with this is that the typical area foreman was only responsible for about 5% of the municipality’s roads. Map books were thus cumbersome and wasteful. But once I learned SQL, I was able to tailor the map books to each area foreman. From that point on, area foremen only got map books that contained the roads they were responsible for.
Here, then, are three reasons why you should learn SQL, especially if you’re young.
- It’s easy. Any well-manicured ape can learn the basics of SQL.
- It costs nothing other than time to learn it. If you have Microsoft Office, you probably already have a database on your computer (Access). And if you don’t, you can download a great database called MySQL for free. As far as learning goes, spend 15 minutes a day at w3schools. It’s a great website for SQL tutorials. Here’s the link.
- Finally, if your job entails using a computer, knowing SQL is a great way to stand out at work and move up. At my government job, I went from picking up roadkill to being the highway department’s IT guru because I was the only one who bothered to learn SQL. And even at my last job, where basic knowledge of SQL was common coin, I still managed to move up because my advanced SQL skills allowed me to automate complicated and time-consuming tasks that others couldn’t.
Final Thoughts
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Is SQL man’s second greatest invention of all-time? Or is that notion just the twisted conclusion of a washed-up data analyst? Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.
btw, i had a link to this land in my in-box today. i suppose someone jonesing to learn SQL might find this useful https://frontendmasters.com/workshops/sql/
This is what happens when I go out of town and off the grid for a bit. I “lose” the chance to comment! Ok, I’m catching up.
Also, I “WAS” an engineer but quit 7 years ago. I never learned SQL and now you are making the best suggestion on why I should return to my former geek ways and add this to my tool belt. Nice idea Mr. Groovy!
I’ve seen the acronym SQL but had no clue what it was until I read this post. I’ll add it to my summer to-do list to learn when this school year ends 🙂
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There’s something beautiful about constantly expanding the boundaries of your knowledge. Whether it’s the pursuit of FIRE, SQL, or just diving deep on an author or topic that intrigues you, I love that you and Mrs. G are such fans of continuing education.
My wife thinks I’m crazy, but I’ve hinted that after I leave medicine I might seek a short-term position at a nearby bike shop because I’d love to learn proper maintenance of a bike.
My mountain bike is a decade old, was free thanks to American Express points I’d forgotten I’d earned from a card I opened in college, and continues to serve me well. How great would it be to become proficient in bicycle maintenance!
Here’s to you nuts who help us squirrels continue to push ourselves.
Fondly,
CD
Good post! I’ve never had much interest in databases (I prefer using computers for more creative pursuits such as graphic design), but thanks to your article I may take a closer look into SQL just to burnish my technical skills a bit.
I’m mainly writing about your Lincoln quote. So very, very true. We’re all going to shuffle off this mortal coil at some point, and only a tiny percentage of us accomplish enough to, as Steve Jobs once said, “Make a dent in the universe.” But writing is the best way to speak to the future, and I HIGHLY recommend writing your autobiography to pass along your wisdom, insights, knowledge, and life’s story. Start writing your bio now, before it’s too late.
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[insert THANK YOU gif here from The Office]
Maybe as a programmer, I am biased on this topic but I truly believe that learning basic coding skills (including SQL) is essential for anyone who wants to overcome digital illiteracy. Besides for the next generations, these skills won’t be optional, so anyone who wants to keep up with them it would be desirable.
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So true, my friend. Coding and SQL are today what farming skills were in the 19th century. If you don’t know them, you’re going to have a tough time flourishing.
Shoot. Apparently I need to up my game 😉 Love your blog, but apparently I need to comment more. Ha
LOL! Stop it, Angela. You’re doing fine. And Mrs. G and I feel likewise. We’re so happy we found your blog. Great freakin’ stuff.
Aww, thank you! This whole FI community online is pretty darn great.
Whoa Mr G you could have an awesome post fire side hustle here! As someone married to a literal programmer, it embarrasses me to admit I know literally zero about programming/ computers/ databases… I’ll volunteer to be your first student 🙂
Hey, you could totally freak Mr BE out by whispering little SQL clauses into his ear! Try this one when your cuddling on the couch one day.
“SELECT field1, field2 FROM table1 INNER JOIN table2 ON field1 = field2”
Hahaha that sounds so romantic! I’ll wait for the perfect moment to bust this one out 😉
I knew some SQL people when I started working. That’s job security. Seems like a great area to be an expert.
I should put this on my list of things to learn. My track record with Python is not good, though. I guess I’m not much of a database person.
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I never looked into Python. I know it’s a big programming language. I had no idea it also had very good data-manipulating capabilities. Perhaps one day I’ll give it a look-see. And great point about the relation between SQL and job security. My company closed down my Charlotte office and moved operations to Dallas. But it had to keep me on because it didn’t know what the hell my coding and SQL did! Great comment as always, my friend. Cheers.
I strongly recommend picking up Python. It’s a great scripting language to start writing some simple/small things to do fun things that leverage packages which do all the heavy lifting. Want to scrape a web page to grab all the prices, use one package to grab the HTML, use a second package to parse it into useful fields, use a third package to update a spreadsheet, use another package to graph it into a pretty picture. The Python serves as the glue to bring it all together.
I can’t believe you wrote an entire post about SQL?! Ha!! I don’t know that I would put databases up there with penicillin or the wheel or electricity or the internal combustion engine, but they’re fantastic in their own right.
We were discussing this morning how the democratization of information has changed the world. Don’t know where a restaurant half way around the globe is? Look it up! And yes databases are an instrumental part of that. It’s really quite amazing when you think about it.
Luckily we’re both married, discussing these things in a social setting is a sure fire way to go home by yourself!!! Even being married, if I talk about it too much I still risk it.
Regardless… maybe we can expand on databases on talking trash. You should look into Spark. It is crazy. I dont know mich about it, but im starting to use it some at work.
PS – tell Fritz I’m back in the lead!!
“Luckily we’re both married, discussing these things in a social setting is a sure fire way to go home by yourself!!!”
I refuse to believe this. You mean a young Mr. WoW in tight jeans talking SQL wouldn’t be a babe magnet?
Typically that will include discussions of how I use my Python.
You should look into python… numpy and pandas are great and it’s basically a huge excel sheet.
You can also run the front end of Spark in Python. SciKit Learn is great for AI and machine learning.
All through Python. It’s pretty easy to pick up and read.
I am a teenage dream in my skin tight jeans. Lol
Check this out…..
https://automatetheboringstuff.com
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Or this: https://www.datacamp.com/courses/introduction-to-relational-databases-in-python
Oh Jeez Mr. Groovy. I don’t know if I can squeeze one more thing on the pre-departure list, but this is pretty compelling.
When we started talking about our bike trip, I immediately started thinking about all the things we could track (besides expenses). I kinda put that part of the bike touring dream to the side, but now you’ve got me thinking again!
I love it, Mrs. G. The bike tour will be great for your heart. Learning SQL will be great for your mind. Reading Freedom Is Groovy will be great for your soul. Okay, that last one is off the deep end. But learning SQL is a great brain workout. Thanks for stopping by, Mrs. G. I always feel better after reading one of your comments. Cheers.
Man, I got to get on that comments database! Great stuff today Mr. G. Although I might put flushing toilets ahead of databases on the best inventions list.
Oh, man, great point, MSF. Life without a flushing toilet would be pretty dismal.
Made the list, woohoo! For the record, I think you both contribute so much to the community and I’m thankful for you and your support.
I’m going to put this on my list of things to learn. Thanks, Mr. G!
Believe me, Amy, the feeling is mutual. Mrs. G and love your work and can’t wait to meet you at FinCon. Hey, maybe we can host a hospitality suite together where we drink beer and talk SQL with our fellow money nerds? Talk about a rollicking good time!
Yes, sql is mighty. I teached my-self everything about IT I know. Today, I feed my family with a stock screener I have built all alone with the knowledge I gained and hard work.
If I could, everyone else can, too.
Regards,
Torsten
A self-taught SQL maven and an app developer? This comment gave me a tremendous CMLT. Thank you, sir.
SQL is important, but not the future. The language struggles in distributed processing databases. Python is the most appropriate language for big data and distributed networks. It has similar syntax to SQL but more elegant background processing that seems better for Hive, R and other open source tools
Yeap, I’ve been hearing a lot about data manipulating qualities of Python lately. Once I’m done with our home build, I’ll check it out. In the meantime, are you familiar with LINQ. I played around with it a couple of years ago and thought it was pretty cool. Does it currently have any cachet in the data manipulating universe? Thanks for stopping by, Hannah. You gave me a lot to chew on. Cheers.
ok, then third must be Compound Interest!
Oh, wow, Lisa. You’re making me think. I love Abe, and think he possessed a first-rate mind. But Einstein had a first-rate mind too and he thought compound interest was man’s most miraculous invention. I got to think about his one. Right now I’m leaning toward making compound interest number one. Thanks for stopping by, Lisa. Great comment as always.
Interesting, and not something I know anything about!
I’ve never considered myself especially tech savvy but blogging has highlighted this fact even more. I’ve picked a few things up along the way for sure but I feel like I’ve hardly scraped the surface. Adding SQL to the must learn in 2018 list.
Hey, Sarah. Give it a try. Just 10 minutes a day for a month. Learning SQL is a great brain workout and it might come in handy. You’ll know after a month if it’s worth pursuing. Thanks for stopping by, my hockey-loving friend.
Woo-hoo, I made the list! Plus you’ve used one of my favorite movie clips. 😀 As far as knowing SQL, I’m happy to say that apparently Suzanne knows how to use it, although she hasn’t made me any cool commenter tables like you have, at least not yet. But I guess it wouldn’t kill me to actually listen when she talks about database gobbledy-gook. And I wholeheartedly agree that younger and even older folks in the midst of their careers would benefit from knowing some STEM related skills, even if that’s not in their job description. Kudos to you for using SQL to excel in your career and beyond.
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Haha! I knew Suzanne was one awesome babe. Not only does she have great taste in men, she knows SQL. The perfect package. You’re a lucky man, my friend.
Hey, Mr WoW hasn’t commented yet, so that puts me in the lead, right??!!!
Cool that you know how to mine databases. Great example of teaching yourself something that adds value.
And, for the record, you’re plenty nice to me! Glad to call you “friend”!
Commenter-o-meter
Fritz: 32
Mr.Wow: 31
Oh man, Mr.Wow is going to have a field day with this post. Databases and SQL? Mr. G you are totally speaking his language.
So true! This post is definitely in Mr. WoW’s wheelhouse.
The feeling is mutual, my friend. Two honorary Southerners trying to fix the finances of the typical American one post at a time–the perfect recipe for friendship.
The company I work for is in the Big Data space, and it’s fascinating stuff. I essentially knew nothing about it before this job and I’ve been learning a lot. It’s definitely the way where the future of business/tech is moving. I may take you up on the challenge of learning SQL, hopefully I’m more savvy than a well-manicured ape 😛
LOL! You are a notch above a well-manicured ape, my friend.. And it looks like knowing SQL could be very fruitful in your current position. Check out this post about SQL’s resurgence in Big Data.
Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data
Mr. G. It feels like the first time I saw my name in a phone book. I am somebody! Happy to appear in your query. I’m not sure about your question, it’s out of my expertise (most stuff is). I am an excel guy. Tom
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Likewise, my friend. Always look forward to thoughts. They definitely elevate the quality of this blog. Cheers.
Time for a clean slate!
Delete from table1;
Commit;
Muhahahaha
Ive known a lot of devs that don’t like or hate SQL and Regular Expressions but to me those are the two most important things to know how to use in the world of programming.
Excuse me while I go find this admin section!
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“Delete from table1.”
You’re an evil man, BOAS. And, oh shoot, I forgot all about regular expressions. Great catch, my friend.
I’m on it! I too am in a festering swamp of politics and sloth. “Please save me SQL. I’m praying to get out.” In fact, I’m going to have the kids learn it with me. Can’t start too early.
I love it, Sue. Check out this link from Mommy Poppins. It has great resources for teaching coding to children. As you aptly pointed out, you “can’t start too early.”
Coding for Kids: Free Websites That Teach Kids Programming
SQL is a failure of mine. Learning it would benefit me at work and would differentiate me from my peers. Despite knowing this I’ve not taken the time to learn it pure laziness. Thanks for making me feel lazy this gloomy Friday morning Mr G. 😂
BTW, I’d love the query – want to try it out on my own site. You’ve got my email 😁
I hear ya, my friend. Life just gets in the way sometimes. Try to do 10 minutes a day. In six months you’ll have a solid footing in SQL. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. Oh, I just sent you the SQL to test out on your blog’s database. Let me know how it works out. Cheers.
I don’t know about greatest gift but it sure is invaluable for anyone that has to look at or manipulate data. There’s just certain things excel can’t do.
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Haha! Are you saying my title is click bait? And you are so right about Excel. I love Excel, but it’s so much easier to manipulate data when it’s in a database. Cheers, my friend.
Woooo, #6! Hahaha
Learning SQL is super easy and very handy in all sorts of roles. I sadly don’t use it as much as I want – working at a healthcare company, DB security is incredibly locked down. As a consultant, I can’t even get Read access to non-production, de-identified data. It’s frustrating when I’m supposed to be the data guy!!
I always found that people who could use at least very basic SQL commands were easier to work with. If nothing else, they tended to value data in their decision-making process.
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I know what your talking about, my friend. In my last job, DB security was incredibly tight as well. I was helping programmers and analysts understand my job and port my SQL Server SQL to DB2 SQL. But I only had read access on the DB2 databases. And a lot of my SQL Server SQL had stored procedures. So I couldn’t write the stored procedures needed for my process to work in a DB2 environment. Very frustrating. I got around this by including a lot of Common Table Expressions in my SQL. It made my SQL ginormous but got the job done. Thanks for stopping by, Dave. It’s always a pleasure hearing from a frustrated SQL lover. Cheers.
I love it when you talk dirty. Particularly, when your queries are against a source in 3rd-normal form.
I have seen some videos of GraphQL but haven’t actually tried to do useful work using it. Nevertheless, I think big data and being able to tease out actionable intelligence from huge data sets is a valuable life-skill every young person should cultivate.
Visualization and making it look pretty is another Big Deal when one is trying to tell a story from a dataset. Thus Python and the Jupyter Notebook belong in every data scientists’ utility belt.
(There must be something geeky in the water, b/c I’m drafting a post on Quantum Portfolio Management this morning.)
I love when you talk Codd! I’ve heard a lot lately about the power of Python. I never worked with it, and it may be time to start playing with it. Before I left the 9-to-5 world, I started playing with the No SQL database, Mongo. So once I’m done building a house, I’ll check out Mongo and Python. I try to keep abreast what’s going on in Big Data. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. Can’t wait for the Quantum Portfolio Management post. I’m getting CMLTs just thinking about it.
I will tell you in about 1 month!
For the past 2 weeks in my Coding Boot Camp, we have been doing nothing but MySQL. Doing simple queries like you mentioned. I can attest though that it is EXTREMELY powerful in retrieving concentrated data that the user wants!
Exactly, Sean! Most of the time, the data you work with is just one giant blob. Getting into something that is intelligible and useful is what counts. And that’s where SQL comes in. Thanks for stopping by, my friend.
A better measure would be how many people share your posts, not just commenting.
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Oh, no! Are you telling me I have to learn the API for Twitter now?
I’m a former software engineer so I’ve used more than my share of SQL. And you’re right – it’s a very powerful tool!
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And the beauty of SQL is that it’s fairly constant across databases. Know SQL for Access and it won’t take you long to get up to speed on SQL or MySQL, SQL Server, or DB2. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. Always great hearing from a fellow SQL nerd.
Yup, we use it on the job to store and retrieve data for interface transactions. We don’t use it directly a lot, but it’s handy when needed. Certainly the tools we use run it behind the scenes as well.
I love it, Rybo. Same as my last job. I mainly used Access as my front end. I would use VBA and SQL to grab data from Excel and text files, manipulate that data, and then store it in SQL Server or DB2. Fun stuff. Definitely kept the day interesting. Thanks for stopping by, my friend.
The Groovester getting all geeky on a Friday morning, I love it!
I agree, and I tell my employees they should at least try to learn some basic “stem-based” skills. Even if that only means doing a pivot table in excel or writing a batch file. Dorks of the world – unite!!
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Haha! What would this world be without dorks? And you are so right, AF. If you don’t get into SQL and databases, at least master the fundamentals of Excel.
SQL is useful to know and understand! I didn’t realize it until way after I learned it during my Masters in Library and Information Science program. At Drexel, we had the option of going more library directed (cataloging, etc) or more into information science, and learning SQL and coding/backend things. Once I learned how to build and design with SQL, it opened up a new world (and options for employment). It’s something I still use today, and I am amazed at how few people have even opened up “Access.”
Once you learn it, you’ll see how useful it is for building all sorts of information databases in your own personal life, too!
Oh, and excited to have made your list!!
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Runner, podcaster, and SQL maven! I hope your family appreciates your awesomeness.