One approach I've been enjoying recently in my personal use is to write a light wrapper around DuckDB to enable composable SQL snippets. Essentially like what I have here https://gist.github.com/ajfriend/eea0795546c7c44f1c24ab0560a..., but without the `|` syntax.

You're still writing SQL, so you don't need to learn a new syntax, but I find it more ergonomic for quick data exploration. I also have an easier time writing SQL from memory than I do writing the equivalent Pandas code.