Database is SOOOO Boring

I did some college a few years ago and one of our modules was learning to use a database through MS Access. It was absolutely the most boring lecture/class I've ever taken in my life.

Not only that, but the lecturer was a boring, nerdy "professional" with no charisma or character. He made the lecture even more boring.

About a year on I started to learn to write raw SQL (MySQL) and realised how completely different it is. It really depends on your outlook and what you want to achieve. For example, I find using phpMyAdmin to be quite easy, intuitive and user-friendly, but MS Access is boring, ugly and confusing and the docs suck.

However, back to the point at hand: do you need to learn MySQL for web development? I don't know... what sort of web development are you interested in? There's client-side development and server-side development. Client-side is more JavaScript-based where are the server is all PHP/ASP/CGI, which you'll be using in tandem with a database most of the time.

I know how boring database coding can be, but just think of it as a piece of a larger puzzle. It's just a place to store your data, it's no big deal. As long as you can learn how a database works, how to make queries, select/store/sort/etc., you'll be fine. Don't worry about it, there are people who specialise in SQL who will be around to cover your back in a real job anyway and if not, there's ALWAYS help online or in any coding communities where SQL geeks who love the language will be able to help.

If you're going to be a web developer it definitely is essential to know how to handle mySQL and such but it's pretty simple lol, not sure how boring classes on this subject are as I didn't go to school for this.

I learned a lot of stuff that is relevant to web development when I took a database class in college.

Microsoft Access is a good starting point to get a basic idea of how databases work and for learning SQL. Stick with it. I'm sure you'll learn something worthwhile.

If your going to be a DESIGNER .. then no doesnt matter.
If your going to be a DEVELOPER .. then its 100% needed.

If you think its boring you might want to lean to the designer part

By the way Access sucks .. It will get better when you get to MYSQL

Hey, lovboa
In my experience being able to model complex real-world data problems effectively in a relational db takes a lot of practice and constructing complex, fast queries can be fiendishly hard (although it can be exciting, in its own way, if you’re crazy like that)

So I think, boring is good, my man. Enjoy boring. With databases that’s a win.
As a web developer you may never come across real hard core back-end database programming unless you’re working on real-time, financial services applications or something.

Let’s leave the complex stuff to specialists like someone else mentioned above.

Try to develop a site ,
then you can realize mysql is boring or not.

Almost 99.99% of websites has some kind of database, if you want to build them you have to know how they work

If you want to do any type of programming for a living, then yes, you should stick through the course. Databases are everywhere, and you can't be a developer without having at least a basic understanding of how they work and how to use them.

Introductions to anything are rarely the life of the party, its not till later when you start realizing why you were taught all the boring stuff and what it does you'll see it's all worthwhile..

Ya to be a web developer you must have to learn it.
it's really boring to me also.

DB (and database query optimization) is one of most important things in whole web development.

You can begin with little knowledge over this but what would you do if website you manage gets (in effect of marketing campaign) lots of traffic (and queries).

Yes, and no.

Whatever you don't learn from this course- you will pay in the future if you should build the next big thing. Whatever knowledge you forego will require you to pay a DB admin to do your dirty work, and they DON'T COME CHEAP.

That's entirely up to you.

Now.

You can build websites without any knowledge of relational databases with just about any CMS-- joomla, wordpress, and drupal, just to name a few. The only prob is the developers of said software didn't really know much about relational DB's either-- or just failed to incorporate the features of mysql that mean the difference between taking 10 ms to load a page --or 5 secs....

These toys, as I call them, scale very poorly. And because of the "one size fits all" approach to CMS's, you end up with bloatware and hundreds of round trips to the DB.

You know, you can build a web app that makes less than 10 calls to the DB?

see pof.com

Built by one person, and it handles almost a TRILLION-- yes TRILLION-- pageviews a month with just 3 databases. Amazing! Marcus, his name, didn't sleep through HIS mysql classes

Just sounds like you have a murderously boring instructor.

This is POWERFUL stuff-- keep on it-- it's every bit as important as learning your favorite programming language. Hell- it IS a language in itself- and its concepts are used in even the trendy and sexier NOSQl solutions.

at some point you will need mysql in developing websites for sure, so it will come in handy

That depends on what you plan to do in the future. I think designers don't need that much.

I think mysql will be a lot easier to learn, and a lot less boring if you learn it along with something else. because by itself it's pretty much useless, but when you combine it with server side langauges like php,python, ect. you can use it to actually build something cool. And then you will probably be more interested in it.

SQL DB is important for Dynamic sites specially and it's easy if you use PHP with it + PHPMYADMIN

Stick with it, especially anything to do with mySQL & php, learn everything you can.

IMO the money is in the developing part more than the design (Photoshop, etc...), the Photoshop part is easy once you figure out how to slice images & organize layers.

it depends,maybe someone just like it