And yet I agree with both. SQL is at the same time easy to get started, incredibly powerful and yet also a complete disaster. Just like JavaScript but with standards you have to pay to read and implementers take their sweet time to implement. ORMs (with the possible exception of JOOQ, whose open source version is unfortunately also very limited) are hopelessly limited and have been a drag on the development of the field ever since.
i think “disaster” is hyperbole. my brain thinks in concert with sql so it feels natural, though i will concede that the parsing/syntax order differences was an odd choice.
programmers and language users all have a mental translation layers that they use to go from conceptual->concrete using the syntax and idioms of their language of choice.
javascript doesn’t make sense in a lot of ways. calling it a disaster is hyperbole. go doesn’t make sense in a lot of ways. it’s not a disaster. unfamiliarity or disagreement with choices does not necessarily mean it’s a disaster
the only language with which i’m familiar that is a complete, unmitigated disaster is the english language, but i suppose that’s outside of the scope of this conversation
> the only language with which i’m familiar that is a complete, unmitigated disaster is the english language
Out of curiosity, are you a native speaker of english or did you learn it as a second language?
I’m a native speaker and feel sorry for anyone who has to learn all its irregularities, etc. But the few times I’ve mentioned this to anyone who had to learn as a second language, they’d correct me and tell it was easy. Which baffled me.
Obviously as a native speaker, I’m in no place to judge it.
SQL syntax is only on the surface level similar to natural language. Besides, if we actually considered similarity to English to be an important criteria for a programming language, we would all still be using Cobol.
native english speaker. learned german (fluent) and italian (conversational). english is an insane amalgamation which may be why it’s become near lingua franca
