I'd start with CMU's "Intro to Database Systems", their lectures are on youtube. Highly recommended both for the depth and how Andy Pavlo presents the topic. [this video]
CMU intro to database systems lectures with depth and great presentation
Agreed. I finished watching them at the start of this year and it's significantly helped me in using and making choices about databases. I've also since started implementing my own database for learning off the back of them. Couldn't be more grateful for those courses being public. link if anyone is interested: [this video]
Helped database choices and inspired building own database
[this video] There are multiple years available for his first DB class but that’s the one I watched. I almost called it his ‘basic’ class but there’s literally only like one or two classes on SQL before he dives into all the various layers of the internals. There’s also a few of his advanced courses. And then you’ll see guest lectures from industry on about every one of the new DB platforms you can think of. They’re all under “CMU Database Group” on Youtube. Highly recommend.
Intro class diving into database internals, with advanced courses and guest lectures
Intro to Database Systems by Andy Pavlo - [this video] MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems by Robert Morris - [link] Designing Data-Intensive Applications (DDIA) - [link] Crafting Interpreters - [link] > What made it so special these break down really complex topics and make the concepts approachable. As a noob, I learned a lot from these.
Breaks down complex topics approachably for newcomers
I stumbled across this Carnegie Mellon University database course a year or two ago and this guy gets really deep into the technologies behind a database. Here's the list of YouTube videos of lectures that the professor has posted online: [this video]
Intro to Database Systems by Andy Pavlo - [this video] MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems by Robert Morris - [link] Designing Data-Intensive Applications (DDIA) - [link] Crafting Interpreters - [link]
Listed among resources that improved programming skills
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
7 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.