The author, a seasoned developer with experience working on distributed systems, shares their perspective on the state of the database world in 2017, highlighting the challenges faced by developers when choosing between NoSQL and SQL databases. The author notes that the initial focus on NoSQL was misguided, as it prioritized language features over production-grade stability and consistency. Instead, the author advocates for "non-relational SQL" databases that combine the benefits of SQL with those of NoSQL, allowing for scalable and reliable data storage and retrieval. Today, sharded SQL databases are the preferred choice for mission-critical applications, while NoSQL databases are used to handle large datasets or provide faster data access. The author also discusses the limitations of clustering solutions, which can be combined with manual sharding to achieve scale out and HA, but require significant complexity to implement.