I think the pretext of this articles is ridiculous.

Yes, SQL is based around relational algebra, but all programming languages are built on a theoretical foundation.

And SQL is very much a "fad" language - it just somehow managed to stick around. The goal was not some sort of mathematical purity, but rather to built a natural language data interface (sounds like something currently very hyped?) and it failed spectacularly at that goal.

It is so far from natural language that English speakers with statistical understanding won't be able to read it, but it is also inconsistent enough in its grammar design that it is unreasonably difficult to learn and needs large refactoring every time you want to query into the result of a query.

To continue my rant: Sometimes '=' is an identity test, sometimes it is `==`. Sometimes groups are called groups, sometimes they are partitions.

When creating a CTE, you put the name before "AS", but when creating a column, you put the name after "AS".

SQL is great because it is everywhere and it is definitely good enough, but it is not something great, that transcends other programming languages.