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0 pointsveqq9mo ago0 comments

Er, have you heard of datalog or Prolog? Declarative programming really does work. SQL was just... Botched.

0 comments

Yes. And I think SQL is actually pretty good for what it does. My point, as the parent's (I suppose) is that we've heard this "XYZ, which uses natural language, will kill software development" before.

sanderjd9mo ago

I think SQL is better than datalog. I suspect this is one of those opinions that may be somewhat outside consensus on a forum like HN, but is strongly within the consensus more broadly.

aeonik9mo ago

I like both, they excel at different things.

SQL is pretty horrifying when you start getting tree structures or recursive structures. While Datalog handles those like a champ.

SQL is really nice for columnar data, and it's well supported almost everywhere.

Though Datalog isn't half bad at columnar data either.

sanderjd9mo ago

Yeah. I think you and I have the same opinions about this :)

I like SQL more when working with tabular data (especially for analytical use cases), but that has (thus far) dominated the kinds of work I've done.

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glimshe9mo ago

sanderjd9mo ago

I think SQL is better than datalog. I suspect this is one of those opinions that may be somewhat outside consensus on a forum like HN, but is strongly within the consensus more broadly.

aeonik9mo ago

I like both, they excel at different things.

SQL is pretty horrifying when you start getting tree structures or recursive structures. While Datalog handles those like a champ.

SQL is really nice for columnar data, and it's well supported almost everywhere.

Though Datalog isn't half bad at columnar data either.

sanderjd9mo ago

Yeah. I think you and I have the same opinions about this :)

I like SQL more when working with tabular data (especially for analytical use cases), but that has (thus far) dominated the kinds of work I've done.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse