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

Post by rawgabbit » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 10:34 PM UTC

randomNumber7 wrote: post #44

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…

Also SQL is not turing complete. I see it more as a descriptive language like e.g. html is a language but not a programming language.

Post by johnh-hn » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #25

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…

Indeed, Dapper, myBatis, jOOQ,...

Post by lateforwork » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 10:43 PM UTC

yawaramin wrote: post #15

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'?

Post by tete » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 10:50 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #56

iamsomewalrus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

genuinely curious, can you steel man stored procedures? views make intuitive sense to me, but stored procedures, much like meta-programming, needs to be sparingly used IMO. At my new company, the use of stored procedures unchecked has really hurt part of the companies ability to build new features so I'm surprised to see what seems like sound advice, "don't use stored procedures", called out as a cargo cult.

My hunch is that the problems with stored procedures actually come down to version control, change management and automated tests. If you don't have a good way to keep stored procedures in version control, test them and have them applied consistently across different environments (dev, staging, production) you quickly find yourself in a situation where only the high priests of the database know how anything works, an…

Post by tete » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 10:53 PM UTC

gcanyon wrote: post #16

> 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.