I don't think SQL is "perfect" and I'm not sure it's rational to even be saying that. For instance, why is it that the syntax for an SQL query is "select A from B" when many SQL-inspired syntaxes have switched to something like "from B select A" to make it more compositional?

The relational model is pretty simple though. Pandas is an awful mess.

Is that really how it should be judged? If I need to get data from state A to state B, SQL is the most elegant and efficient way to do it. If I need to modify the states, or break them up to optimize for memory, SQL is the easiest way to do it. It’s been around for over 50 years and no one’s come up with anything better.

From-before-select has nothing to do with composition as far as I can think of? That’s to solve the auto-complete issue — put the table first so the column list can be filtered.

Things like allowing repeat clauses, compute select before where, etc are what solve for composition issues