SQL is the perfect example of "worse is better". SQL was an amazing invention for its time, but it has not grown and developed the way other languages have. T

SQL is the perfect example of "worse is better". SQL was an amazing invention for its time, but it has not grown and developed the way other languages have. There is basically no industry velocity in upgrading SQL the way there was with procedural languages. SQL and C were both invented in the '70s. While C may not have grown as much as SQL has, new major languages that handle similar tasks to C have come into their own, willing to throw out old syntax or ideas where needed. Now, one could argue that SQLite is the Javascript of SQLs, and that T-Sql is the C# of SQL, and that PL/SQL is the COBOL of Sql, and that Postgres is the Java of SQL... but in all cases those C-derived languages were far more willing to experiment and break out of the narrow bounds set by their antecedents than SQL variants were. Obviously there are small and interesting experiments in the DB space, but none of those are the kind of industry-standardized improvements to the formula we see in the space of C-derived languages.