Comment by HenriTEL
3 days ago
Well you nailed it, the language you're looking for is SQL. There's a reason why duckdb got such traction over the last years. I think data scientists overlook SQL and Excel like tooling.
3 days ago
Well you nailed it, the language you're looking for is SQL. There's a reason why duckdb got such traction over the last years. I think data scientists overlook SQL and Excel like tooling.
Out of the current options, I strongly agree - I even wrote a blog post! https://www.robinlinacre.com/recommend_sql/
But on the other hand, that's doesn't mean SQL is ideal - far from it. When using DuckDB with Python, to make things more succinct, reusable and maintainable, I often fall into the pattern of writing Python functions that generate SQL strings.
But that hints at the drawbacks of SQL: it's mostly not composable as a language (compared to general purpose languages with first-class abstractions). DuckDB syntax does improve on this a little, but I think it's mostly fundamental to SQL. All I'm saying is that it feels like something better is possible.