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by bunderbunder 524 days ago
Why not both? In my career, I have met countless people who are experts in programming in general, but with relatively modest skills in database systems.

Which is fine! It's really hard to be truly expert in both. There's a reason why "programmer" and "database administrator" used to be two different professions. I'd like to think that I'm better than your average developer at flogging RDBMSes, but most DBAs I've worked with can still run circles around me when it comes to information modeling and database & query optimization.
1 comments
Tostino 524 days ago
At a lot of companies, there are still full teams of people slinging t-sql or pl/SQL all day long to support their organization. Not DBAs, just developers who primarily work inside the database system their entire life.
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hiAndrewQuinn 524 days ago
I keep my old SQL Server Anki cards alive for just such a use case. It's been a minute since I had to jump into a 3-digit-LOC SQL script that does some arcane financial processing or what have you, but there's a nice steady niche there in case I ever want to throw my hat back into the ring.
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