Opinion from a developer. Okay, an OLD developer.

I've been working with different query languages for quite a number of years starting with the dot prompt in dBase II. (I did say I'm old, didn't I?) I started learning T-SQL in MSSQL 6.5 and haven't looked back since. I think Microsoft has done a heck of a job with MSSQL. My experience with the "average" developer is they "haven't the time" to learn T-SQL and all it can do for them.

As for myself, I'm a c# programmer along with a number of other languages. When it comes to extracting data from a database, I've tried all the latest and greatest including Linq, managed code for MSSQL, various IDEs for SQL development, and ultimately end up back in the current iteration of a query analyzer writing my queries, functions, and procs by hand.

Shortcuts just for the sake of getting a job done faster are mostly detrimental to the overall effort. Learn the language. Apply it to some real-world examples. Hopefully you'll come to appreciate it.