[mixedCase]

https://prql-lang.org/ has a bunch of good examples on its home page.

If you engage the syntax with your System 2 thinking (prefrontal cortex, slow, the part of thinking we're naturally lazy to engage) rather than System 1 (automated, instinctual, optimized brain path to things we're used to) you'll most likely find that it is simpler, makes more logical sense so that you're filtering down things naturally like a sieve and composes far better than SQL as complexity grows.

After you've internalized that, imagine the kind of developer tooling we can build on top of that logical structure.

[meepmorp]

> If you engage the syntax with your System 2 thinking (prefrontal cortex, slow, the part of thinking we're naturally lazy to engage) rather than System 1 (automated, instinctual, optimized brain path to things we're used to)

You might not have intended it this way, but your choice of phrasing is very condescending.

[mixedCase]

Re-reading it I can see how it could be perceived by some people as such, thanks for pointing it out. There's probably better phrasing or adding more context could make it more amicable:

The goal was to explicitly tell people not to bother "just reading it" as one (and by one I mean myself and most people I know, surely there are exceptions) is naturally inclined to do unless something is particularly piquing our interest.

Without engaging in active, conscious effort, syntax that is different than what we're used to (specially something as established as SQL) where the changes aren't groundbreaking at first glance can easily make us dismissive without realizing the benefits. And after seeing it too many times with all kinds of technologies that stray away from the familiar, I just want to prepare the reader so that their judgment can be formed with full use of their faculties rather than a reflex response.

[BeefWellington]

Edit: In my pre-coffee rush this morning I completely missed the grouping by role (which is not that much harder FWIW). This unfortunately invalidates my entire post as it was posted and I don't want to spread misinfo.

[fader]

I don't think your alternatives actually solve the same problem. Your alternatives would give you the single most recently joined employee. The actual problem being solved is to find the most recently joined employee in each role.

You'd need to do some grouping in there to be able to get one employee per role instead of a single employee out of the whole data set.

[BeefWellington]

Yeah you're correct, I caught that and edited my reply right as you responded.

Time willing I will provide an updated reply with fixed SQL.