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The Rise of SQL:the second programming language everyone needs to know

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Re: The Rise of SQL:the second programming language everyone needs to know

#11

Post by rawgabbit »

TomasBM wrote: post #8

Somewhat tangential to the article, but why is SQL considered a programming language ? I understand that's the convention according to the IEEE and Wikipedia [1], but the name itself - Structured Query Language - reveals that its purpose is limited by design. It's a computer language [2] for sure, but why programming ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…

Because "programming language" is an adjective or a descriptive term. Whatever looks like a programming language, can be called a programming language.

Re: The Rise of SQL:the second programming language everyone needs to know

#12

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

TomasBM wrote: post #8

Somewhat tangential to the article, but why is SQL considered a programming language ? I understand that's the convention according to the IEEE and Wikipedia [1], but the name itself - Structured Query Language - reveals that its purpose is limited by design. It's a computer language [2] for sure, but why programming ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…

To be honest, I'd like to chip in that it is technically possible to write brainf*ck, an esoteric programming language but nonetheless, its a programming language

https://www.reddit.com/r/SQL/comments/81barp/i_implemented_a...

Btw this runs in sqlite, you can try it yourself if you are interested.

Source: I was thinking of creating a programming language paradigm like sqlite/smalltalk once where resumed execution/criu like possibilities were built in. Let me know if someone knows something like this too. I kinda gave up on the project but I knew that there was this one language which supported this paradigm but it was very complicated to understand and had a lot of other first time paradigm like the code itself / the ast tree is sort of like a database itself but so the tangential goes.

Re: The Rise of SQL:the second programming language everyone needs to know

#13

Post by koolba »

bitexploder wrote: post #2

One of the few things I have used in programming and technology consistently for over 25 years is SQL. Almost no time spent learning how to organize and query data has been a waste in my career.

Bingo.

"Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships”

Some quotes stick with you throughout your whole career.

Re: The Rise of SQL:the second programming language everyone needs to know

#15

Post by yawaramin »

TomasBM wrote: post #8

Somewhat tangential to the article, but why is SQL considered a programming language ? I understand that's the convention according to the IEEE and Wikipedia [1], but the name itself - Structured Query Language - reveals that its purpose is limited by design. It's a computer language [2] for sure, but why programming ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…

What is your definition of 'programming language'?

Re: The Rise of SQL:the second programming language everyone needs to know

#16

Post by gcanyon »

> the second programming language everyone needs to know

Do they though? I've been writing SQL for over twenty years, and my experience is that LLMs have been better at writing it than I am for at least most of 2025, for most use cases. I have zero doubt that I will only be writing SQL when I want to for fun no later than sometime 2027.

Re: The Rise of SQL:the second programming language everyone needs to know

#18

Post by pjmlp »

yawaramin wrote: post #14
pjmlp wrote: post #9

I am quite found of PL/SQL, and stored procedures, no need to waste network bandwith with what can be done on the database.

'The original microservices'

Microservices are older than those, hence why Sun had the motto "The network is the computer". :)

By the time you are referring to, we were already on the classical 3 tier architecture, the

There are indeed Web frameworks for RDMS, that allow to expose the database as microservices, like Oracle's APEX, which grew out of Oracle's Visual Basic version, which used PL/SQL instead of BASIC.

Re: The Rise of SQL:the second programming language everyone needs to know

#19

Post by bikeshaving »

This is a nice coincidence.

I’ve been heads-down on publishing a JavaScript full-stack metaframework before the end of the year. However, in the past two weeks I’ve been goaded by Claude Code to extract and publish a separate database client because my vision includes Django-style admin/forms. The idea is to use Zod to define tables, and then use raw SQL fragments with JavaScript template tags. The library adds a tiny bit of magic for the annoying parts of SQL like normalizing join objects, taking care of SELECT clauses and validating writes.

I’m only using it internally right now, but I think this approach is promising. Zod is fantastic for this use-case, and I’m sad I’ve only just discovered it.

https://github.com/bikeshaving/zen

Re: The Rise of SQL:the second programming language everyone needs to know

#20

Post by forgetfreeman »

HillRat wrote: post #6
petcat wrote: post #5

I've loved and used Django ORM and SQLAlchemy for many years. It got me a long way in my career. But at this point I've sworn-off using query-builders and ORMs. I just write real, hand-crafted SQL now. These "any db" abstractions just make for the worst query patterns. They're easy and map nicely to your application language, but they're really terrible unless you want to put in the effort to meta-program SQL using w…

The cargo-cult shibboleth of "never put business logic in your database" certainly didn't help, since a lot of developers just turned that into "never use stored procedures or views, your database is a dumb store with indexes."

There's value in not having to hunt in several places for business logic, having it all in one language, etc. I was ambivalent on the topic until I encountered an 12 page query that contained a naive implementation of the knapsack problem. As with most things dogma comes with a whole host of issues, but in this case I think it's largely benign and likely did more good than harm.
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