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Another good example of the issue here is any programming language that was meant to be able to be read/used by non programmers. SQL is a great example there in

Another good example of the issue here is any programming language that was meant to be able to be read/used by non programmers. SQL is a great example there in my opinion. The syntax and structure is clearly meant to try to mimic relatively natural language, yet in practice I think SQL is vastly more challenging and complex than most any programming language intended to be used by programmers. Of course this goes all the way back to all the programming language that used to be used around the time of SQL's development, such as things like COBOL. They're just really tough to work with, even for those of us who learned it as one of our first languages. Anecdotally at least C structure languages now feel 'natural' to me, whereas the natural language programming languages always felt (and feel) like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> The syntax and structure is clearly meant to try to mimic relatively natural language, yet in practice I think SQL is vastly more challenging and complex than most any programming language intended to be used by programmers. I don't; and the fact that I've known plenty of people who are not programmers before and do not consider themselves such afterward who have picked up SQL fairly quickly seems consistent with it not being that much of a barrier. I think SQL had some design decisions that are particularly frustrating to programmers who are familiar largely with currently popular general purpose languages, though.
lucozade 9y ago
I find SQL to have a usage profile that's, not surprisingly, similar to other declarative languages. Then tend to have a sweetspot of functionality that, if you stay within, makes them very easy to use even for less experienced people. But outside the sweetspot, things tend to go south very rapidly and you end up needing detailed implementation knowledge that the language will fight against.
QuantumAphid 9y ago
SQL as a language is simple and easy. It's applying it properly for a relational algebra of a database which makes it far more complicated.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> The syntax and structure is clearly meant to try to mimic relatively natural language, yet in practice I think SQL is vastly more challenging and complex than most any programming language intended to be used by programmers. I don't; and the fact that I've known plenty of people who are not programmers before and do not consider themselves such afterward who have picked up SQL fairly quickly seems consistent with it not being that much of a barrier. I think SQL had some design decisions that are particularly frustrating to programmers who are familiar largely with currently popular general purpose languages, though.

lucozade 9y ago

I find SQL to have a usage profile that's, not surprisingly, similar to other declarative languages. Then tend to have a sweetspot of functionality that, if you stay within, makes them very easy to use even for less experienced people. But outside the sweetspot, things tend to go south very rapidly and you end up needing detailed implementation knowledge that the language will fight against.

QuantumAphid 9y ago

SQL as a language is simple and easy. It's applying it properly for a relational algebra of a database which makes it far more complicated.