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

Post by Nihilartikel » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 10:55 PM UTC

danem wrote: post #34

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…

Anytime this topic comes up, this opinion is invariably at the top of the comments. However I've never seen a non-trivial application made this way. Mind sharing one? More than the query generation, I think people reach for ORMs for static typing, mapping, migrations, transactions, etc. I'm not doubting that it can be done, I'm just curious to see how it's done.

Post by 0x457 » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 11:01 PM UTC

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."

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 11:19 PM UTC

lateforwork wrote: post #68

rtkwe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you present the interrelations between the tables when you're dealing with complex table structures?

Use a tool to do that. Try https://visualdb.com it can send the relationships and table definitions to AI.

Post by hunterpayne » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 11:30 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 ChromaticPanic » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 11:39 PM UTC

elevation wrote: post #46

b450 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ORMs come with a lot of baggage that I prefer to avoid, but it probably depends on the domain. Take an e-commerce store with faceted search. You're pretty much going to write your own query builder if you don't use one off the shelf, seems like.

I once boasted about avoiding ORM until an experienced developer helped me to see that 100% hand‑rolled SQL and customer query builders is just you writing your own ORM by hand. Since then I've embraced ORMs for CRUD. I still double-check its output, and I'm not afraid to bypass it when needed.