> First, lambda calculus isn't a language -- at least, not in the typical sense. There are common ways to express lambda calculus expressions in order for peop

> First, lambda calculus isn't a language -- at least, not in the typical sense. There are common ways to express lambda calculus expressions in order for people to communicate those expressions with each other, which is very much a language. After all, we are talking about the language of SQL here, not the mathematical concepts that lie beneath the language. Don't confuse what SQL is able to achieve with the way SQL is written. We are discussing only the latter. > The problem is that any new SQL would just be a new mapping for the same underlying relational algebra. And general purpose programming languages map to the same underlying turing machine. That hasn't stopped us from coming up with variations in language to improve the developer experience, even if they are all quite similar at the end of the day. Let's face it, if you can program in one general purpose programming language, you can program in them all. There are no real differences between them. The only thing to learn when switching languages is the grammar and idioms of the language. The underlying mathematical theory never changes. You could just as easily say "Welcome to the new C, same as the old C." And yet, the new C has proven to be quite valuable when it comes to developer productivity and happiness. There is very much room for the same in SQL land, if someone was ever motivated enough to look for it. I maintain that NoSQL becoming synonymous with unstructured key-value/document data stores has killed what motivation there may have been though.