SQL doesn't compose all that well.
For example, imagine that you have a complex query that handles a report. If someone says "hey we need the same report but with another filter on X," your options are to copy paste the SQL query with the change, create a view that can optionally have the filter (assuming the field that you'd want to filter on actually is still visible at the view level), or parse the SQL query into its tree form, mutate the tree, then turn it back into SQL.
If you're using something like dplyr, then it's just an if statement when building your pipeline. Dbplyr also will generate SQL for you out of dplyr statements, it's pretty amazing IMHO.
On that topic, I really enjoy working in Elixir because Ecto [1] lets you write "SQL" with Elixir's composable functional syntax. It sits somewhere between "the language is compiled to SQL" and ORM. The Ruby-esque syntax took some getting used to, but once I was past that hurdle my productivity skyrocketed. It's not 100% feature complete compatibility with all the different SQL dialects, but most of what you'll need is there.