[cribwi]

In some cases for removing repeating (intermediate) calculations, I generally find it easier to use a lateral join (in postgres), like

    select
        title,
        country,
        avg(salary)         as average_salary,
        sum(salary)         as sum_salary,
        avg(gross_salary)   as average_gross_salary,
        sum(gross_salary)   as sum_gross_salary,
        avg(gross_cost)     as average_gross_cost,
        sum(gross_cost)     as sum_gross_cost,
        count(*)            as emp_count
    from
        employees,
        lateral ( select
            (salary + payroll_tax)                   as gross_salary,
            (salary + payroll_tax + healthcare_cost) as gross_cost
        ) employee_ext
    where
        country = 'usa'
        and gross_cost > 0
    group by  title, country
    having    count(*) > 200
    order by  sum_gross_cost
    limit 3;

[jseban]

So now we have easily come up with three different ways of rewriting the query to avoid that duplication (which obviously was not a problem at all to begin with): subquery, CTE and lateral join. And there are also several more well known ways (views, custom functions, computed columns etc) so the whole premise now for even inventing a "better" language than SQL is then false? Or what am I missing.

It's also weird how people always argue for immutability and eliminating local state, when using procedural languages, but as soon as they switch to SQL, that actually works like this, they immediately want to introduce mutability and local state.

[dspillett]

> so the whole premise now for even inventing a “better” language than SQL is then false?

I don't think anyone is using the above examples to try invalidate PRSQL, just suggesting the baseline for comparisons should account for all constructs available in the SQL standards and common implementations there-of.

> Or what am I missing.

The statement “I can do X better than <SQL example> with <something else>” does not properly show the benefit of <something else> if “I can do X better than <SQL example> with <another SQL example>” is also true (assuming <another SQL example> is actually agreed to be better, not for instance convoluted/confusing/long-winded/other so just replacing some problems with others).

[paulhodge]

If there's multiple ways to do the same thing that's usually a BAD thing in terms of language design. Especially if some approaches are just newbie traps that experts learn to avoid, or if deciding the best method is a really subtle context-dependent decision. The ideal design is that the language encourages the one obviously "good" way to do it.

[ako]

I'm not aware of any general purpose programming language that doesn't have multiple ways to achieve a specific goal. Can you give an example of language with good design?