Comment by BuckRogers

Agreed on all of that. Further, I wouldn't embrace something intending to displace SQL without it being authored by someone like Anders Hejlsberg (Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, TypeScript). That sort of involvement grants confidence that it's as "correct" as it can be for most users. That matters for buy-in. It can happen, Kotlin is a decent example, but is not embraced as widely as TypeScript has been. I'm sure that confidence plays a big role there. The stakes are much higher here with SQL, than in Java or ECMAScript.

There's plenty of brilliant people out there, but when you're talking about replacing the most successful data storage language in the history of mankind, you need everything. SQL has been "killed" many times, everyone wants to sell something. It would probably take involvement from a FAAMG entity. I think the first clue that there's no real room for technical innovation and we're staring at only the opportunity for technical churn, is that no FAAMG players, who definitely operate at-scale, have tried to displace SQL outright already.

TypeScript or Kotlin are really the closest, best and most recent examples of what would need to happen. For me as an end-user, ubiquity and skill-reusability matters. If you don't like SQL, there are ORMs.