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Comment by pauldix | Hacker News Reader

We opted for the bastardized SQL because we thought it would be easier to understand. Of course, that may not be the case which is why we'd like to hear what people think of it. We based our decision on people using our API in Errplane and not understanding some parts of it without a lot of additional explanation. One of our users said about one part of it "oh, that's just like group by".

I'm curious, did you find the SQL dialect readable and understandable?

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I personally like the simplicity of the SQL dialect. It's a universal way to query data every programmer is familiar with it. Alternatively using functions and code to query data easily gets very complicated.

I really like SQL - as I was learning SQL, I thought it was terrible, but now after years of using it really makes getting to data easy, I'm very excited to see you choose SQL instead of JSON or something less query like to query...

... but that's sort of a stockholm syndrome; it's because you know SQL and it makes you feel comfortable, and you can think of worse options (like JSON).

But SQL is really a bad option in the moodern world, especially since (I estimate) about 90% of SQL statements are built programmatically; Thus, a query language that is easier to construct from code makes a lot more sense. (And not, that's not JSON - some form of algebraic notation or LISPish notation makes much more sense).

Also, SQL semantics are horrible if you have order involved (as you always do in time series).

I disagree - it's not stockholm syndrome.. for me it was realizing that SQL actually has solved a lot of common and useful ways of expressing the process of getting to the data you want in the order process you want... simply because we write code to generate SQL does not make it bad... I suspect you also think HTML is bad? Being able to say select x,y,z from table where x=1 is very simple and very clear IMO... I'm just giving you my opinion though... you clearly see things differently :D

HTML is indeed bad as a machine generated format -- which is what it is; e.g. <p>, list items and a few other things don't have a close tag, but most things do.

These things (like SQL) make sense if you assume that the input is (a) written manually, and (b) by people who are not expected to do this "professionally". Neither is the case of HTML nor SQL anymore.

(Seriously, SQL was originally marketed to managers with the idea that "it's just plain english so you can do it yourself, and don't need programmers!". You know how well that worked out)

> (Seriously, SQL was originally marketed to managers with the idea that "it's just plain english so you can do it yourself, and don't need programmers!". You know how well that worked out)

Pretty well, actually -- lots of nonprogrammer analysts use SQL for queries, and IME the ones that do consistently are better able to answer questions based on data than the ones that use "friendly" query tools, that inevitably end up being much more limited in practice, and requiring a lot more support from both programmers and DBAs to make the data that is already available accessible through.

Unfortunately, lots of environments prevent direct SQL access to DBs for "security" reasons (as if mutiuser DBMS's didn't have role based access controls as a core feature)

I still think SQL is a needlessly verbose mistake. The same people who can successfully write SQL for queries would have just as easily (or more easily) been able to use some algebraic notation. I am not advocating GUI query builders - I'm advocating a non-natural-language-looking (and hopefully better) language, along the lines of kdb+/q.

If you can properly do inner/outer/cross/asof joins to get to the data you want, the english-like syntax is just a burden - two queries that seem similar in their English more often than not produce completely different results because of SQL's 3-value logic, the way NULLs are joined, and various other things like that.

> I still think SQL is a needlessly verbose mistake. The same people who can successfully write SQL for queries would have just as easily (or more easily) been able to use some algebraic notation.

I don't think that's not true -- there's lots of adults that have anxiety around "maths-like" notations largely as a result of issues with maths education, cultural factors, etc., despite being able to intellectually handle the relevant manipulations -- and lots of those people end up in non-technical business positions that end up having to deal with data. Lots of the non-IT people I've seen using SQL definitely fall into that group, and I don't think they'd be as proficient with a more algebraic syntax like the comprehension syntaxes used in many modern programming languages.

Conversely, the people that can be proficient in those syntaxes almost certainly can be proficient in SQL, though they may complain about its verbosity.

Sure, in a perfect world where the cultural context was different, this wouldn't be necessary. But we don't live in that world.

This is a really strange opinion. SQL is an awesome DSL for interacting with structured, relational data. Got no idea where you get your 90% stat from; seems to me that's a product of your personal ecosystem rather than an objective statement about the universe.

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