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Comment by gigatexal | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been in a rut lately. Missing obvious things, shipping less than my best code. It’s come to my attention that I’m not as good at programming as I am at crafting database queries and tuning them but that’s such a small niche given how easy it is to pick up SQL that I’m having an existential crisis.

So I’m working on getting better and getting more confident.

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You could make a career out of just SQL. I know my company could use a decent SQL programmer. We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of procs written by SQL amateurs

That’d be a lot of fun. I find so much joy in that actually. Figuring out what variation of a query satisfies the query planner to create the most performant plans is fun!

Correct. Tuning SQL queries can deliver performance improvements of several thousand percent, in exchange for just a few hours' work. EXPLAIN is your friend.

>I’m having an existential crisis

Don't. There are so many poorly performing queries and databases in the world that you could make a very tidy income just specializing in sorting that out. Even if you knew nothing else that skill will keep you employable for decades to come.

Or more to the point, don't define yourself by your work.

It's easy to pick up anything. It's difficult to master most. If you're good at SQL, why not transition to be a full-time DBA? In the right companies, good DBAs are highly valued.

I suspect there is quite some business helping companies wanting to transition from Oracle or MongoDB to PostgreSQL.

I was a SQLServer DBA for a while and found the administration of things so boring. It was the crafting of queries and the designing of schemas that was the most fun.

If the administration part is a necessary tax to be paid then so be it if I get to do the other part.

> So I’m working on getting better and getting more confident.

FWIW, I'd say the most important characteristic of terrible programmers is their supreme unearned confidence!

Which is to say: Focus on getting better. The confidence is secondary.

The confidence is for sanity reasons purely. There’s nothing more demoralizing than agreeing to do a seemingly simple task and then failing. So I’m getting better so that I have the confidence in my self

I'm a quite senior engineer, and I fail routinely at tasks.

My secret trick is simply to ask people for help when I'm stuck.

I will say the support to my thread has received has been super nice and helpful.

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