[viceconsole]

Your three examples historically were successful in achieving widespread usage, and in the case of SQL, shows no sign of disappearing.

[Panzerschrek]

They are widespread, but not among "normies", but professional programmers. That's what I call a failure, since they were initially designed to be used by non-programmers.

[bazoom42]

Because we call someone using a programming language a programmer. But certainly many professionals who arent full-time programmers write Excel formulas or queries.

The intention of SQL was to be used by domain experts rather than computer scientists. I’d say it have been successful at that.

[crowdhailer]

I'm not sure "normies" is the right grouping. I think that is too broad some people are artists and some people just aren't that curious to try. I think a better group to target is "makers" I think that's anyone with enough ambition to at least try and fix a plug or change a lightbulb.

[nylonstrung]

I think this has less to do with design flaws of SQL and more to do with normie users historically not touching databases and query engines directly

[pjmlp]

I am quite sure that plenty of Excel users know BASIC and SQL.

[himata4113]

I would love having the capability of just writing json-esque SQL that has the most basic type checks, alas we live in purgatory with weird build systems to validate queries.

[bazoom42]

What is json-esque SQL?

[seanmcdirmid]

SQL is a real programming language with a super high ceiling if you need to write scalable queries.

[crowdhailer]

I think this is a point I should make more clearly. And there are more examples of programmable environments. Excel being one.