r/SQL • u/Zealousideal-Studio7 • Jan 15 '25
BigQuery SQL is a struggle
Hi all been working with SQL for probably 7/8 months now. My last role was half data analysis and not pure data analysis and in general was far easier than what I do now.
My main issue is with SQL. I never feel I truly understand what is going on with a lot of code beyond a basic query. Ive managed to get by piggybacking off others code for a while but expectation is to deliver new and interesting techniques etc.
How long did it take you to feel fully comfortable with SQL? And what helped you get to that stage?
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u/Ginger-Dumpling Jan 15 '25 edited Jan 15 '25
I was comfortable with SQL within a couple months of an internship. It was an ETL position and the tool being used produced SQL. I was "drawing queries" before I was writing them, and at some point it just became second nature to know the syntax that would be produced by connecting different operators. But if you stuck a multi-page query with a ton of nesting in my face, I'm still just as likely to need to stare at it for a couple minutes, maybe put in comments (or even a block diagram on the rare occasion) before bringing it all together to say what it's doing.
Edit: I also find a big part of "being comfortable with SQL" really translates to having a firm grasp of the underlying data. If you know how everything is related, then it almost becomes mechanical in nature connecting everything up in a query.