Comparing SQL - a 4GL - to assembly language seems disingenuous at best, to the point where the Blub paradox applies. (And lo and behold, just four days ago you

Comparing SQL - a 4GL - to assembly language seems disingenuous at best, to the point where the Blub paradox applies. (And lo and behold, just four days ago you compared SQL to Lisp on the basis of incompatible implementation!) Unlike assembly, which is famously redundant, SQL doesn't have much to abstract away, and the majority of counterexamples are covered by macros. The things that it really can't abstract are the implementation details that you want to care about when you optimize. Some parts could be a little less clunky, in the same way that the C language could be a little less clunky, but the successful track record of SQL over decades speaks volumes: it's not the stuff going on inside the database causing people the most grief, it's the programming goop that gets attached to it.