You are looking at this with a performance lens and I appreciate that. Performance is important. But I think the issue is more general. Software is bloated bec

You are looking at this with a performance lens and I appreciate that. Performance is important. But I think the issue is more general. Software is bloated because we modify and patch together existing solutions instead of designing from first principles, because we think that more is better and because we are too afraid to say no. In essence we are too reactive and short term oriented. --- An aside: Bloat and amount of functionality are not necessarily equal. There are systems that have evolved since decades and have stood the test of time because they incorporate additive evolution such as the JVM, Emacs, Linux, the Web... Something that grows because it enables growth is not the same as something that is large because stuff was piled on top of it in an ad-hoc manner. Calling the former "bloated" would be unfair. --- SQL or rather relational thinking and expression is something that by its nature reduces complexity, because it lets you express the essence of a given model without introducing control and state (at the interface). What you are criticizing is fair: it is a leaky abstraction because at some point you are forced to think about performance and the initially beautiful model becomes limiting. But it does solve the "make it work" and "make it beautiful" parts very well for a large category of problems.