> Actually why limit yourself with SQL...?

Because it's everywhere, has extensive documentation and tutorials, all database tools support it, all relational engines support it, some non-relational engines support it, all programming languages have library support for it, it can be accessed through command line tools as well as graphical interfaces, etc.

You think an industry is going to give up 50 years of infrastructure because some (typically junior) devs think the syntax is "kinda icky"?

> My favorite example which sound easy but isn't - select the row which is MAX(...).

If you look earlier in the comments you will see queries that have "DISTINCT ON" in them. It solves the problem that sounds easy, but actually is pretty easy if you know SQL.

I agree, sql is well documented and an industry standard, no need to make it more complex by adding preprocessors that do nothing but change the syntax.

Just bite in and learn proper sql.

I would love relational database engines to adopt the same syntax when they support a feature. There is no compelling business case for them to do so though. Browsers converged largely in response to IE's dominance. If Firefox, Safari, and Opera had each gone their own way, no single one of them could ever get enough marketshare to get developers to care. Together they made a block significant enough that Microsoft was forced to join in or die. (Actually did effectively die once Edge was moved to the Blink engine. Now it's a satellite of a mostly standards-compliant effort.)

But databases aren't browsers. Devs just have a single target usually: whatever database engine the company decided to use.

Still it would be nice to have greater overlap to reduce the niggling details between them that only seem to exist today due to inertia rather than technical necessity.