The existence of terribly written queries proves nothing. Because there's also plenty of terribly written code that takes 100 pages to do something simple. In

The existence of terribly written queries proves nothing. Because there's also plenty of terribly written code that takes 100 pages to do something simple. In both cases it comes down to people blindly grasping when they don't understand the fundamentals. Relational logic can be extremely elegant, composable, and testable. Unfortunately SQL is a pretty awful interface to expose those ideas, and most attempts to wrap SQL in a better interface make the mistake of trying to pretend to be object-oriented, when they should really let their true relational nature shine through.