> It was a bit depressing to see the solid column of Xs by SQLite

Except WITH [RECURSIVE] which is in SQLite since early 2014. Damn, I forgot to use that trivia in my MySQL bashing... ;)

Other than that, I met Richard Hipp in person some years back. He is a VERY pragmatic guy. I wrote an article about it:

https://use-the-index-luke.com/blog/2014-05/what-i-learned-a...