The Stockholm Syndrome of SQL | Prime Reacts

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[ANONAAAAAAAAA]

Not every technology needs to be like JavaScript ecosystem.
It's blessed to have established, log-lived technologies like SQL, UNIX and REST in this fast-moving industry.

[xybersurfer]

SQL is not a string only language. SQL only tends to become a string inside other languages, as a result of the way most languages integrate with SQL

[rmidifferent]

Its funny to me how many people think that if a piece of technology does not constantly evolve it means its automatically worse than ecosystem that changes all the time. What if the technology that remained is simply good? If the goal has been achieved there is no need for constant changes. Not everything needs to be javascript where new "better" ways to do thing are invented (or reinvented) every few months.

[marcobaldi]

The thing with SQL is based on the relational model for databases by the legend Edgar F. Codd. TLDR it has a tons of math to back it up, not just hype.

[KoeiNL]

I'm not a developer, but work in analysis and use SQL daily. It is so useful that most databases use SQL, because otherwise I would have to learn so many languages. Even though every SQL dialect is a little bit different its close enough that hopping from MSFT SQL server, to Oracle, to Big Query to Postgresql isn't an issue. Would be a real pain if they all worked fundamentally different.

[byronjones]

Did you know that the technique for making bricks used today predates the epic of Gilgamesh? Sometimes things not changing is OK.

[arkemiffo]

Intelligence is knowing that Frankenstein wasn't the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein was the monster. :)

[eldarshamukhamedov]

Not gonna lie, bright-eyed engineers that complain about tech choice and get mad when their preferred quirky tech isn't given the attention they think it deserves, are so difficult to work with.

[casperes]

In 1998 (I believe - may be off by a year), at WWDC, there was a Q&A session. A woman asked Steve Jobs what happened to "think different" because he announced that they'd be adopting some standard thing instead of continuing use of an obscure proprietary thing (forget what the thing was). The woman named a few things the Apple thing did better than the standard thing. And Steve Jobs replied "There's probably plenty of things that <thing A> does better and some things <thing B> does better. But the point of Think Different was never to be different for the sake of it. The point is to be better. You can't be better by being the same, but if the standard thing is the best you shouldn't cling to being different for the sake of it. Keep to the goal; Being better. And when you're not the best, it's probably better to be compatible with what's already there and improve it from there" (very paraphrased. Been many years since I heard it from his mouth)

[LagunaCloud]

This article screams to me the engineer who comes to every meeting like "GUYS DID YOU SEE THIS NEW SHINY THING THAT WE SHOULD IMPLEMENT!" Worked with a couple of those guys and it always make for unsustainable production code. SQL is just about as straightforward as database interface as you can get. You wanna create some new interface that can do everything SQL can do, go ahead.

[cyanstar]

Ten minutes in and I am still shouting at the screen that there are a whole class on databases literally called NoSQL, and losing my mind that MongoDB was even casually mentioned without that coming up

[veragault]

I mean… SQL is essentially a superset of a field of math… the only way to compete with SQL is to make an entire field of math to compete with relational algebra and then make a query language to interface with data using that new math

IMO where the competition lies is in making a DBMS that better optimizes and runs existing SQL queries

[kuhluhOG]

29:02 The reason for that is actually a legal one.
SQLite wants to keep the project in the public domain which means that they need to do a lot of legal work too besides the implementation and maintenance work.
But here's the thing: Not everybody is able to put their stuff into the public domain. Heck, in some countries it's literally ONLY possible by dying and then waiting for it to run out which isn't really a nice way.

[BosonCollider]

Imho Datalog (either the original or the datomic variant with the lispy syntax) is the best alternative syntax for SQL that manages to match it in expressiveness and is used by the relational database research community in papers whenever they publish on new concepts like incremental materialized views. Graph databases basically offer a weakened version of datalog with query languages like Cypher.

Datalog is nicer than SQL for CRUD operations, for queries that don't use negation, and for recursive queries. It is way less nice than the postgresql dialect when you actually need to optimize your queries and need to reason about the memory layout of your tables/indexes or the query plan that actually gets run. In many ways, datalog is to SQL what lisp is to the C family.

[Pico]

Primeagen's pronounciation of SQL will never not trigger me lmao

[GigAHerZ]

The only DB abstraction i need, is LINQ - essentially a typesafe-SQL, nothing more.

NB! C# compiles to WebAssembly - C# *is* web.

[simon]

SQL is not a string literal problem. Look at the bytes on the wire, they are fully typed. I.e. its a binary API. Many client libraries exist to move datatypes 1:1, with syntax to optimize for query plans.

[BC]

If you think of databases as APIs using their own format (SQL instead of JSON), many of the problems magically disappear.

[freesgen]

Yeah the OP is mixing two totally different things. SQL is a standard but DB has their own implemantation that varies in Syntax but he is pointing problems for ORM's or how language interacts with SQL. why SQL should care about that if you go to an SQL tool you got all those features he is asking for.

[donwinston]

SQL is based on mathematics. There is no other/better way to do it for a relational database. It is a standard. Developers can use the same language on every relational database product. Moving applications from one db vendor to another doesn’t require a rewrite of all the code.