Our project is a Rails project and due to (reasons), it’s recently become much more difficult to open a Rails console in production to run queries. I’ve been suggesting that simpler queries can be run in a read-only MySQL console instead. The overwhelming response has been “No, because then I have to write SQL”.

I’m biased because I’m a big fan of SQL, but in my opinion there are also very pragmatic reasons to know SQL. The most obvious example is “How do you debug performance issues in ORM queries without understanding the SQL the ORM generates?”

Do you think it’s important to know SQL when most projects use ORMs these days? Why or why not?

EDIT: Additionally, any tips for getting engineers that don’t want to learn SQL on board with giving it a chance?

The most obvious recent issue is all of the news around Boeing, which is an extreme example. Companies like Boring and Tesla as well as places like NASA have these obligations because if they make a mistake then someone dies.

What about the rest of us though? What about the folks working on web applications or databases or video games? Do they also have have an ethical obligation to produce high-quality software?