I started with MySQL. At some point I encountered project based on Postgres. It just came with its own set of quirks you had to deal with. It didn't feel like, wow, this is so much better. It was more like, yup, it's a database, it just COUNTs slowly and needs to be VACUUMed. I had more issues and questions at the time how to do things I knew how to do in MySQL, I figured them out, but those two are the impression that were left.
Then I encountered MsSql Server and it was pleasent enough. For my next project I'd probably choose Postgres but not because it created any kind of sympathy in me. The only thing I reallty liked was EXPLAIN.
MySQL has one advantage in my opinion. At least it had two decades ago. It was simple. It did things that realtionational databases are good at, in fast and easy manner. It didn't have constructs like nested queries, recursive queries, triggers or stored procedures with cursors which databases like Postgres had, because who's gonna stop them, but their performance is horrible and must be horrible because they step out of the realm of fast relational model into the realm of normal programming which algorithmically is way slower (and that's the main reason we use databases at all).
So MySQL in my opinion teaches you about what the databases are good at. It helped me immensly when dealing with slow queries later in life in Postgres, SQL Server and even Oracle.
For some definitions of better.
I started with MySQL. At some point I encountered project based on Postgres. It just came with its own set of quirks you had to deal with. It didn't feel like, wow, this is so much better. It was more like, yup, it's a database, it just COUNTs slowly and needs to be VACUUMed. I had more issues and questions at the time how to do things I knew how to do in MySQL, I figured them out, but those two are the impression that were left.
Then I encountered MsSql Server and it was pleasent enough. For my next project I'd probably choose Postgres but not because it created any kind of sympathy in me. The only thing I reallty liked was EXPLAIN.
MySQL has one advantage in my opinion. At least it had two decades ago. It was simple. It did things that realtionational databases are good at, in fast and easy manner. It didn't have constructs like nested queries, recursive queries, triggers or stored procedures with cursors which databases like Postgres had, because who's gonna stop them, but their performance is horrible and must be horrible because they step out of the realm of fast relational model into the realm of normal programming which algorithmically is way slower (and that's the main reason we use databases at all).
So MySQL in my opinion teaches you about what the databases are good at. It helped me immensly when dealing with slow queries later in life in Postgres, SQL Server and even Oracle.