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"SQL is the worst form of database querying, except for all the other forms." LOL. As long as many people believe things like that, innovators can go out, lear

"SQL is the worst form of database querying, except for all the other forms." LOL. As long as many people believe things like that, innovators can go out, learn new tools that will give them 10x more productivity and be able to make better things faster, delivering more business value. In the words of Paul Graham http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html "But I don't expect to convince anyone (over 25) to go out and learn Lisp. The purpose of this article is not to change anyone's mind, but to reassure people already interested in using Lisp-- people who know that Lisp is a powerful language, but worry because it isn't widely used. In a competitive situation, that's an advantage. Lisp's power is multiplied by the fact that your competitors don't get it."

lukaseder 10y ago
I know that article, it's excellent. And I like Paul Graham's point of view, usually. But that article addresses (and will ever only address) the "elite". Like QUEL, which didn't make it. SQL did. This doesn't have too much to do with innovation. It has everything to do with product-market-fit. SQL is the technology for the masses. QUEL (or something else more recent, very lean and sophisticated) is the technology for the elite. But why doesn't the "elite thing" go mainstream? Wrong product-market-fit.
- RyanHamilton 10y ago
  Could JOOQ be considered a kind of language for the "elite" in that respect? Those that want the extra power to write queries quickly with type safety etc instead of manually crafting the java/sql interface. That extra speed was one of the reasons I looked at JOOQ. I do like your idea, I guess I've made similar judgement calls in the past. I know some mainstream languages for the popularity power it gives me but for use cases where I think I can find a technical advantage I seek out new ideas/languages for that edge.
  - lukaseder 10y ago
    Hmm, I haven't thought about it this way. But I don't think so. While jOOQ does enable a lot of "advanced" language features (like row level type safety across languages, and streaming of such tuples in Java 8 Streams), I still think that it mainly addresses the "masses" - at least those "masses" that profit from a slightly more sophisticated SQL integration than just boring CRUD. The examples exposed in the linked article certainly aren't every day examples for the masses. But I personally absolutely agree with you. There are technologies that do enable orders of magnitude in development efficiency. For instance, I'd love to work with Clojure and Datomic. I have a huge respect for Rich Hickey. But I don't think that everyone should, or ever will, use these technologies. In the end, when you have to do recruiting, from your local market, and you need 100 developers, choose Clojure and you'll be screwed.
- epalmer 10y ago
  QUEL's problem was not that it was for the elite but that Relational Technology (later named Ingres) did not have any sense on how to market and sell Ingres RDBMS and promote QUEL. Oracle's strength has always been marketing and sales and they started to take over the market quickly from Ingres in the first few years of commercial RDBMS. Yes there were other players in the market at the time but in the very early days it really was Ingres versus Oracle. For those of us that are older we know that Ingres was a result of Dr. Michael Stonebraker's work at Berkeley. There was at the time a university project known as Ingres and a commercial product known as Ingres. Yes postgres is what happened at Berkeley after Ingres. I always loved QUEL and was downright pissed when it was ignored over the inferior SQL.
  - lukaseder 10y ago
    We kind of agree, but from a different angle. I see a product in its entirety: Technology + Community. The latter should extend beyond the technology-affine end user. As you mentioned, Oracle was always better at that. I wasn't alive back then, I only know from listening to the stories. But I'd say that most Oracle customers are rather happy being Oracle customers, while only a select "elite" regrets what happened back then.
    - epalmer 10y ago
      My memory is failing me at 62 but back then the Ingres community was much more positive about the product than the Oracle community. At one point I was president of the North American Ingres User Group (Association, what did we cann it?). I had moved from using Oracle version 1.x to Ingres 1.x in the beginning because Oracle was so bad. I think that was about 1982 or 1983. But the company (Relational Technology) just had no idea what they had and how to sell it. I'm an Oracle customer today because my shop has a site license. I would use mysql for what I need an RDBMS for today (very light, low volume usage). Oracle is overkill for my work. But it is always available and there are advanced features should I need them.
  - woliveirajr 10y ago
    VHS x Betamax competition was also cruel...
matt4077 10y ago
Wow, look at all those 10x programmers in this threat. Ladies & gentlemen, we're in the presence of greatness!
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
romaniv 10y ago
"SQL is the worst form of database querying, except for all the other forms." IMO, if you think of Prolog(s) as a database(s), that model is far more enjoyable to work with than SQL.
- lukaseder 10y ago
  Yes, or Datomic in particular is very nice, too. But there's a difference between "enjoyable" and "good" in a general sense.
coldtea 10y ago
>LOL. As long as many people believe things like that, innovators can go out, learn new tools that will give them 10x more productivity and be able to make better things faster, delivering more business value. LOL. These "Innovators" are just reinventing the square wheel, only in "webscale" mode. We had all these tools and novelties (including "nosql") back in the 70s and 80s (and part of the 90s), they sucked, we dropped them. Seems people haven't even learned enough from the early Mongo craze which ended up with tons of teams finding out Postgres is still faster, safer AND more feature full. >"But I don't expect to convince anyone (over 25) to go out and learn Lisp. The purpose of this article is not to change anyone's mind, but to reassure people already interested in using Lisp-- people who know that Lisp is a powerful language, but worry because it isn't widely used. In a competitive situation, that's an advantage. Lisp's power is multiplied by the fact that your competitors don't get it." Only the LISP in this situation is SQL -- not those "10x innovations".

lukaseder 10y ago

I know that article, it's excellent. And I like Paul Graham's point of view, usually. But that article addresses (and will ever only address) the "elite". Like QUEL, which didn't make it. SQL did. This doesn't have too much to do with innovation. It has everything to do with product-market-fit. SQL is the technology for the masses. QUEL (or something else more recent, very lean and sophisticated) is the technology for the elite. But why doesn't the "elite thing" go mainstream? Wrong product-market-fit.

RyanHamilton 10y ago
Could JOOQ be considered a kind of language for the "elite" in that respect? Those that want the extra power to write queries quickly with type safety etc instead of manually crafting the java/sql interface. That extra speed was one of the reasons I looked at JOOQ. I do like your idea, I guess I've made similar judgement calls in the past. I know some mainstream languages for the popularity power it gives me but for use cases where I think I can find a technical advantage I seek out new ideas/languages for that edge.
- lukaseder 10y ago
  Hmm, I haven't thought about it this way. But I don't think so. While jOOQ does enable a lot of "advanced" language features (like row level type safety across languages, and streaming of such tuples in Java 8 Streams), I still think that it mainly addresses the "masses" - at least those "masses" that profit from a slightly more sophisticated SQL integration than just boring CRUD. The examples exposed in the linked article certainly aren't every day examples for the masses. But I personally absolutely agree with you. There are technologies that do enable orders of magnitude in development efficiency. For instance, I'd love to work with Clojure and Datomic. I have a huge respect for Rich Hickey. But I don't think that everyone should, or ever will, use these technologies. In the end, when you have to do recruiting, from your local market, and you need 100 developers, choose Clojure and you'll be screwed.
epalmer 10y ago
QUEL's problem was not that it was for the elite but that Relational Technology (later named Ingres) did not have any sense on how to market and sell Ingres RDBMS and promote QUEL. Oracle's strength has always been marketing and sales and they started to take over the market quickly from Ingres in the first few years of commercial RDBMS. Yes there were other players in the market at the time but in the very early days it really was Ingres versus Oracle. For those of us that are older we know that Ingres was a result of Dr. Michael Stonebraker's work at Berkeley. There was at the time a university project known as Ingres and a commercial product known as Ingres. Yes postgres is what happened at Berkeley after Ingres. I always loved QUEL and was downright pissed when it was ignored over the inferior SQL.
- lukaseder 10y ago
  We kind of agree, but from a different angle. I see a product in its entirety: Technology + Community. The latter should extend beyond the technology-affine end user. As you mentioned, Oracle was always better at that. I wasn't alive back then, I only know from listening to the stories. But I'd say that most Oracle customers are rather happy being Oracle customers, while only a select "elite" regrets what happened back then.
  - epalmer 10y ago
    My memory is failing me at 62 but back then the Ingres community was much more positive about the product than the Oracle community. At one point I was president of the North American Ingres User Group (Association, what did we cann it?). I had moved from using Oracle version 1.x to Ingres 1.x in the beginning because Oracle was so bad. I think that was about 1982 or 1983. But the company (Relational Technology) just had no idea what they had and how to sell it. I'm an Oracle customer today because my shop has a site license. I would use mysql for what I need an RDBMS for today (very light, low volume usage). Oracle is overkill for my work. But it is always available and there are advanced features should I need them.
- woliveirajr 10y ago
  VHS x Betamax competition was also cruel...

matt4077 10y ago

Wow, look at all those 10x programmers in this threat. Ladies & gentlemen, we're in the presence of greatness!

dang 10y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

romaniv 10y ago

"SQL is the worst form of database querying, except for all the other forms." IMO, if you think of Prolog(s) as a database(s), that model is far more enjoyable to work with than SQL.

lukaseder 10y ago
Yes, or Datomic in particular is very nice, too. But there's a difference between "enjoyable" and "good" in a general sense.

coldtea 10y ago

>LOL. As long as many people believe things like that, innovators can go out, learn new tools that will give them 10x more productivity and be able to make better things faster, delivering more business value. LOL. These "Innovators" are just reinventing the square wheel, only in "webscale" mode. We had all these tools and novelties (including "nosql") back in the 70s and 80s (and part of the 90s), they sucked, we dropped them. Seems people haven't even learned enough from the early Mongo craze which ended up with tons of teams finding out Postgres is still faster, safer AND more feature full. >"But I don't expect to convince anyone (over 25) to go out and learn Lisp. The purpose of this article is not to change anyone's mind, but to reassure people already interested in using Lisp-- people who know that Lisp is a powerful language, but worry because it isn't widely used. In a competitive situation, that's an advantage. Lisp's power is multiplied by the fact that your competitors don't get it." Only the LISP in this situation is SQL -- not those "10x innovations".