This seems like a massive step backwards. And it's not for the benefit of the user (the programmer, she needs to do more work). It's for the benefit of the Re

This seems like a massive step backwards. And it's not for the benefit of the user (the programmer, she needs to do more work). It's for the benefit of the RethinkDB programmer (query planners are hard work!). Add an index in SQL? Existing queries work and can make use of it. Add an index in RethinkDB? Now go rewrite all your code if you want to take advantage of it. That's an improvement? (And do you think the average javascript programmer will do a better job at it than 30 years of database research?) If you're trying to spin shit into gold, maybe you should try a rethink preprocessor. Just write normal SQL in your code and the pre-processor verifies the tables and columns, checks for indices, and writes the best "explicit" query for you.