I think part of the reason so many people don& #39;t like SQL is that there& #39;s like 5 keywords in SQL that work everywhere and anything complicated or interesting is in 35 different and incompatible database-specific dialects.

There& #39;s also two different but completely valid ways of doing joins and 95% of people know only one or the other syntax and so find each other& #39;s queries totally unreadable.