I think SWEs think of databases only as a kind of generic persistence layer and aren't super interested in a lot of the details (more than one has said to me databases are just an implementation detail) or additional capabilities, which I think is a very limited view. Databases are essentially interpreters, just like Python or Ruby. They come with access to a multiuser persistence (etc) service or engine (super handy!) but offer all the affordances of other interpreters. In fact, plpython on PostgreSQL will just use the Python packages on your system.
Do you have to read about it? Sure, just like all programming languages and platforms. But, interestingly, SQL was designed for non-technical analysts, so (to your point) it's more accessible than those others.
