Tools matter. When I learned SQL long ago it was with FoxPro for DOS, and it was a great tool for doing both SQL and text based UIs (as with curses). Later, I u

Tools matter. When I learned SQL long ago it was with FoxPro for DOS, and it was a great tool for doing both SQL and text based UIs (as with curses). Later, I used MS Access 97 and it was an even better tool and sparked a lifelong interest in data modeling. The ui for building up tables (specifying column data types, etc) was really trail-blazing at the time and the interaction remains good today. The built-in ERD charting tool was good, showing your tables in relationship to each other. The visual query builder was...well, I never used it but I suppose it was good? You just had lots of good tools to build tables, flip through their contents, and visualize their relationships. I don't know of any modern environment that functions like that, on any platform. I'm posting this to invite others to either a) correct me and tell me I'm wrong that tooling doesn't matter (a legitimate view, but wrong), and/or b) recommend some modern, OSS Access-like tools that might help flatten the learning curve for you. (And if you're more comfortable with a CLI and a REPL already, then you don't even need this hypothetical tool, but I myself am curious about it.) EDIT: looks like LibreOffice Base is pretty close to MS Access circa 1997.