It's also that whenever an hour is poured into Haskell, Scheme, or OCaml, there's hundreds of hours poured into Javascript, Python, C, Java, ...

Eventually that lets you optimize things more at the compiler level because you have the extra time to maintain it as well.

My primary argument is that a more restrictive language, if designed correctly, has programs which are resistant against bit-rot over time. You can take a program from 15 years ago and compile it. It'll run faster due to optimizations, and hardware improvements. And the program will still be the "right thing to do."

In contrast, if you take C code that's older, you'd shudder and immediately begin identifying things left and right which needs to be redone because the modern machine is different from the aged machine. Part of the efficiency comes from the fact we are building the C code such that it has affordance on current hardware for efficient execution. But when the hardware updates, then the code needs amendment to keep up. Meanwhile, your SQL statement is the same because it's written declaratively.

> Meanwhile, your SQL statement is the same because it's written declaratively.

I must have imagined everything I've read about query planners.