Comment Re:What about SQL? (Score 2, Interesting) 897
Yes, a LOT of web programmers highly overestimate their SQL skill. I've worked at a couple of companies who place a lot of importance on it. At my last workplace, if an interviewee couldn't make sense of (for example) a 50 line T-SQL query with, 5 inner joins, 5 left joins, a sub query, some case statements, grouping, ordering and a COALESCE() function here or there, they wouldn't even be considered.
Almost all web programmers are able to "interact with a standard relational database" at a basic level. But they're completely unskilled at the more advanced stuff. I've seen this time and time again at work, and on irc & forums - even people who are very smart/efficient with their language of choice, can be really poor with SQL, and they don't even know it. The reason they don't know it is because you can "get by" with minimal sql knowledge, by writing inefficient round-about, bad code to deal with the data and achieve the same end result (but just with far uglier, less efficient code)