Yes, SQL is poor.

What could be good is relational + array model. I have some ideas on https://tablam.org, and building not just the language but the optimizer in tandem I think will be very nice.

The programming style reminds me of the old days of clipper and xbase family, even ABAP. I like the syntax.

You can use SQL CTE's and/or VIEW's as a composable abstraction over queries and inspect intermediate results. The language features are there.

The standard things that someone should always say when someone brings up this problem is:

• Datalog is much, much better on these axes.

• Tutorial D is also better than SQL.

Check out https://prql-lang.org/

It solves all the warts of sql while still being true to its declarative execution. Trailing commas, from statement first and reads as a a composable pipeline, temporary variables for expressions, intuitive grouping.

is it a language problem though? it's just lack of tooling.

The dataframe paradigm (a good example being polars) is another good alternative that's more composable (imo).

It is true. I still hate it. I think because it always offers 10 different ways to do the same thing. So it is just too much to remember.