[tomkwong]

Building queries in a programming language is more flexible and the data operation is explicit. You rely on good programmers to do it right.

By contrast, SQL is more constrained about what it can do. It's declarative and you rely on the database engine to optimize the procedure.

Neither is perfect.

[SigmundA]

Linq can be used in a declarative way such that the AST is available and can be rewritten for optimization or transformation say to SQL [1].

Not that this is easy but many project utilize it and the relinq project tries to give you a more usable starting point [2].

After having done SQL for years then Linq, I actually prefer the more explicit operation of Linq by default, I know the order of execution is the one I specify. Also being able to use a full rich imperative language in the query is so very useful.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.linq.ique...

[2] https://github.com/re-motion/Relinq