I don't think that the point was that there are no for loops in SQL. I think the point was that almost always using for loops is wrong and super inefficient and there is a much more efficient way to just use joins instead.
What does it matter? Yeah, at the very bottom of it all there will be a loop. I wouldn't attribute that to C but to the von Neumann architecture.
The point is that by getting rid of loops you remove one way of telling the computer "How" to do it. Start here, do it in this order, combine the data this way.
When "How" is a solved problem, it is a waste of your brain to think about that again. "What" is a better use of your brain cycles.
Exactly, SQL is like a very specific natural language used to tell a database what data you need. The database contains AI (the query optimizer) that will use statistics to determine the fastest way to retrieve the data requested. Depending on your query and the data you have the fastest way to get your data will change. It’s hard to manually write this yourself.
fijiaarone|2 years ago
The reason people use a relational database is because it has loops that are faster, safer, and more efficient than anything you can write.
fifilura|2 years ago
The point is that by getting rid of loops you remove one way of telling the computer "How" to do it. Start here, do it in this order, combine the data this way.
When "How" is a solved problem, it is a waste of your brain to think about that again. "What" is a better use of your brain cycles.
ako|2 years ago
riku_iki|2 years ago
different kind of loops can be different, e.g. 2 nested loop with quadratic time:
for i in t1: for j in t2:
vs sort + merge join with n log n time.