Your advice is pretty good, but I would definitely say that SQL doesnt have a strong relationship between lines of code and runtime, you can line break (and man

Your advice is pretty good, but I would definitely say that SQL doesnt have a strong relationship between lines of code and runtime, you can line break (and many do) your wide table's select into many columns and get there pretty quick. If you are writing SQL regularly, understanding the basics of how the queries you write is not that hard for you engine of choice, and everyone should be required to understand the basics of reading an execution plan so they can find the right inflection points between data gathering and processing. I regularly sigh write and maintain SQL procedures that are >10k LOC, and their runtime never would exceed minutes, much less hours.