It's funny, 10min ago, I had some comment on a 10 years old question of mine, and my question linked to another opinionated answer on stackoverflow. which still has 136 upvotes:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1643365/why-no-love-for-...

I mean I was never crazy, RDBMS are useful, but SQL languages feel awkward not just to me.

I'm curious about an alternative to the SQL language or API for a database system, and I guess that sort of RDBMS would also have a very different design.

BTW the question I asked was about querying data without ever using a SQL language, like tapping directly into the data. Of course a DB system is not designed to be used like this, but to me, it should, or at least there should be better alternative to SQL.

For some reason, python list comprehension/dict comprehension and sets somehow feel like a weird, light alternative to a database system. I just get the raw data with SQL and do data things I should do with SQL, and even if it's ill-advised, it feels so much better, and it works.

Not to dismiss sqlite though, it's a wonderful software.

My weapon of choice when using Python is SQLAlchemy; it gives you composability.

Also, there's https://github.com/PRQL/prql that compiles to SQL.