SQL is one of, if not the most, common programming language out there. I agree it isn't known well, but it not lending itself to being known well, and tricking

SQL is one of, if not the most, common programming language out there. I agree it isn't known well, but it not lending itself to being known well, and tricking people into thinking they know it well, is a flaw of the language. This is a much bigger problem. A good language would not lead people down that path. It not being known well certainly is not for lack of exposure. They used to say the problem with C (especially with respect to memory issues) was that people didn't know it well, which was also true to some extent, but then we realized that we could improve language design to not leave people in that situation in the first place. Something like Rust would have never materialized if people simply took the attitude that you just need to hunker down and know C harder. SQL is ripe for a similar evolution, but such evolution is difficult when the only reason we settled on SQL in the first place was to be compatible with Oracle and Oracle has no reason to change as long as the money keeps flowing in. The competition was going down some other interesting paths for a while. Even Postgres originally used QUEL, which is much closer to Codd's original vision, instead of SQL but eventually had to accept that Oracle won. But does Oracle need to win forever?