I think the main reason mainline SQLs continue to be popular is that, unlike general purpose programming languages, the implementation of the query runner is th

I think the main reason mainline SQLs continue to be popular is that, unlike general purpose programming languages, the implementation of the query runner is the most important aspect, not then language spec. Take Python for instance. The official implementation objectively sucks, yet it remains extremely popular because the language implementation is only a part of a language’s success. That won’t fly for a db engine.