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Comment by pelagicAustral | Hacker News Reader

So this is capable of turning a one-liner of SQL into six lines of barely readable code?

It seems that is the price you pay for the power to turn a 600-line nightmare SQL query into 60 lines of barely readable code.

I would like to see that example then.

I’m all for improving on SQL, but this syntax does not even solve the dangling comma issue as far as I can tell from the example.

I'd rather take the 600 lines of SQL, provided it's not dynamically constructed. SQL is a very high level language, it's fine IMO.

SQL is a horrible language. I’d gladly program in something composable like Elm.

Unfortunately Evan removed GROUP BY in 0.19 and left to buy cigarettes.

It'd definitely need a solid team behind this and not just Evan Czaplicki if I were to trust a database with my data.

Agree. Datalog could be a better alternative: https://datalevin.org/docs/preface

Datalog is awesome but I just don't think it's going to get mainstream adoption at this point.

Why not?

Maybe so, but my father in law, who is a salesman and knows nothing about computers and programming still knows SQL.

SQL is a horrible language in the same way Excel is -- programmers hate it but the what makes it a horrible programming language to developers is what makes it accessible to non programmers.

As a programming language? Sure. As a way to work with relational data? It may be my favorite "language" across all domains because of the terse beauty. I am a self-taught, no CS coder but SQL is the one place where I feel like I get all the math I should know.

An opinionated, possibly hot take would be to call SQL "A more elegant weapon of a civilized age".

Or “the worst query language ever, except for all the alternatives”

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