T-SQL looks like English but thinks like Chinese.

T-SQL is so intuitive that any English speaker could acquire it without too much effort. Taking the SELECT clause as example:

SELECT empid, custid, orderid
FROM sales.orders
WHERE custid = 33;

The statement above is a typical simple T-SQL statement to fetch certain content matching the defined conditions.  Does it look like

GRAB a tablet, a cellphone and a laptop, FROM my office’s server room, and MAKE SURE all the gadgets are Apple products“?

The sentence above is what English speakers would say with comfort. One can see that the T-SQL statement and the English sentence are using exactly the same order in expressing each constituent of the statement: action > location > condition.

However, at the backend of T-SQL, the elements of the SELECT statement are processed in a different order than how it looks. The order is:

FROM > WHERE > SELECT (location > condition > action)

This is exactly the order how Chinese is spoken: 去机房把苹果笔记本,苹果平板和苹果手机拿过来。It literally means “go to the server room, (ba) Apple laptop, Apply tablet, Apple cellphone, bring over.”

The order is location > condition > action!

Can we say Chinese is more logical than English? I have the impression that Japanese sentences are also in the more logical order.

PS: this article is purely for fun. No offense to any language. The conclusion is also simplistic.

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