[ianamartin]

Well, if a database were a PC that you were writing some scripts for, then it might make sense to control it with the same language you use for scripting your PC, wouldn't it? I'd say it's a different enough thing that the same tool doesn't fit both well.

But to be serious, it's not the language that's the barrier. It's the concept of sets and set computation that's different from the more normal things. The language just happens to address the problem domain pretty well. What avoiding learning a smidge of SQL does is allow you to avoid learning to understand your data. And that's probably fine for a beginner. But the article wasn't really addressed to what's wrong with the web for beginners. It's about what's wrong with the web, period. And I don't think that SQL--as a langauge--is really a problem.