Comment by redwall_hp

Map/filter/reduce are idiomatic Java/Kotlin/Scala.

SELECT thing1, thing2 FROM things WHERE thing2 != 2;

val thingMap = things.map { it.thing2 to it.thing2 }.filter { it.thing2 !=2 }

Then you've got distinct(), sorting methods, take/drop for limits, count/sumOf/average/minOf/maxOf.

There are set operations, so you can do unions and differences, check for presence, etc.

Joins are the hard part, but map() and some lambda work can pull it off.