Re: The tragedy of SQL

On Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 1:54 PM Raymond Brinzer <ray(dot)brinzer(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

>
> So, the affection I have for SQL is due to it being a gateway to a
> great idea; my frustration is that it's a bottleneck in getting to
> that same idea.
>
>
I have the opposite perspective. As a dev/manager, SQL is much more
powerful at getting data storage from abstract concept, into a usable
structure, than any programming language I've had the (mis)fortune of
using. I've long since lost count of the massive volume of other people's
code (especially ORMs) I've removed and replaced by updating SQL statements
to do all the logic, and return me exactly what I want. And typically this
also comes with a (sometimes massive) performance gain.

I've managed many a programmer that would complain that SQL is too hard and
they don't want to learn it, but had no problem spending days learning the
ORM of the month that "saves them time" and writing complex inscrutable
monstrosities with them.

Could SQL be better? Absolutely. But in terms of bang-for-my-buck, I
feel learning SQL has saved me more clock-time, and improved my
productivity/value probably more than any other individual language in my
career.