Amazing!!! I was just at a meeting recently where some of us "old guys" were talking about how these younger generations just seem to LOVE complexity and confusion. To suggest that T-SQL should be replaced with C#, or should be more C#-ish - well, now I have heard it all! Right, replace something very simple, with something totally confusing - great idea!

T-SQL is fairly easy and more, you can be "good" at it without having to be "great" - that is, you can teach it to non-programmers and find they do some good basic work. SQL can be tricky, and does have it subtleties but still, I would agree that its easy to work with and probably the easiest after the XBase languages (which were all more English-like).

This reminds me of the famous tale of two engineers (one from Microsoft) given the task of building something to take a person one block from their apartment, to the local corner store. The non-Microsoft engineer comes back with a skateboard, and the Microsoft guy comes back with the Space Shuttle. Yeah, they will both get you to the corner store, but one does it in less than minute with no complexity involved, and the other requires tons of fuel, tons of parts, and has to fly into space and return to just go one block. And of course, after you get your stuff at the store, the Space Shuttle needs to be towed to a launchpad to fly again. The problem these days is too many developers continue to build Space Shuttles where skateboards would do.

I don't know where it all got lost - but simple is always better than complexity for the sake of "cool". I wish the generations of programmers that came after mine had learned that lesson - but sadly, they seem to have learned just the opposite...

...and this fellow's rant about T-SQL illustrates that quite clearly.