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Comment by Twisell | Hacker News Reader

Being mostly a database guy I often feel dumb when I read discussions comparing a popular Python framework over some cutting edge js "unicorn powered" new framework...

So it suddenly make me quite reassured that some others are terrorized by SQL which look to me like a joyful playground.

I guess that should be everyone mantra in CS. Don't underestimate yourself, don't overestimate others, just accept that you can't master everything anymore.

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Yes! "Don't underestimate yourself, don't overestimate others, just accept that you can't master everything anymore." Master what inspires you seems to be working for me right now.

A major life lesson for me. Last week a friend told me the hardest part about being my friend was the sadness he felt watching me sell myself short. Now that I'm getting my bearings again heading into the job market I'm really appreciating his observation.

I guess I should have been paying more attention to Stuart Smalley on SNL.

SQL is powerful and awesome. You can process almost any information such as you don't need to do any extra steps after obtaining results. That is, of course, if your database is well designed. That part is hard to automate.

I took a coursera over a year ago on the R programming language. One of the last projects was getting data from SQL into R. Doing this required installing mysql. Almost no one was able to do it, and the instructor gave up and declared it was optional. I don't remember the technical details, but it was a big complex beast that was very difficult to figure out and didn't work right. It left a bunch of crap on my computer too, starting up some kind of server on startup.

Not to say my issues couldn't be solved. Just that it's not beginner friendly and to explain why people might be terrified of it.

"It left a bunch of crap on my computer too, starting up some kind of server on startup."

That "crap somekind of server" would be MySQL server. Were you trying to install MySQL client instead.

I've never had a problem. `apt-get install mysq-server`and I'm done.

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