Comment by phito

2 days ago

Same here, mostly because I avoid it because I really do not like writing queries. Something about the syntax rubs me the wrong way, especially if I have to switch from MySQL/Postgres/MSSQL regularly. I'll use an ORM whenever I can, if performances do not matter.

6 comments

phito

mattmanser 1 day ago

It's because it's logically in the wrong order, it should be:

   FROM Users 
   WHERE Type = 'Foo'
   SELECT id, name

They use the right order in a lot of ORMs and as I was a SQL expert (but not master), I found it so jarring at first.

You probably have the reverse problem, it doesn't fit your mental model which is in fact the right logical model.

It gets even worse when you add LIMIT/TOP or GROUP BY. SQL is great in a lot of ways, but logically not very consistent. And UPDATE now I think about it, in SQL Server you get this bizarreness:

    UPDATE u
    SET u.Type = 'Bar'
    FROM Users u
    JOIN Company c on u.companyId = c.id
    WHERE c.name = 'Baz'

skydhash 1 day ago

That's because in the relational model, you deal mostly in terms of projections. There's an action and then the rest of the statement is creating the projection of the data the action will apply to. The action always applies to the whole of the projection (IIRC).d
The semantics of SQL and a standard programming language are quite different as they are based on different computing/data model.
cultofmetatron 1 day ago
you would LOVE ecto. its an elixir dsl for writing sql and fixes all the issues I have with sql including what you just mentioned here
- mattmanser 1 day ago
  
  I actually still love writing SQL to be honest,
  I can't have explained myself well, I find the SQL way "normal" even though it's logically/semantically a bit silly.
  Because that's how I learnt.
  My point was, if you learnt on ORMs, the SQL way must be jarring.
  
  2 replies →