I don’t know if the transpiler approach really helps when you still have to be aware of the underlying database engine. I’m fine with choosing something like PostgreSQL and writing code optimized for its specific SQL dialect.
But I’m not sure I want to deal with a transpiler that still suffers from a leaky abstraction. It starts to feel a lot like using an ORM. ORMs promise database-agnostic syntax across different engines, but that promise falls apart when you need to optimize a query and suddenly realize you must account for engine-specific features—like PostgreSQL’s BRIN indexes.
To me, abstracting away the engine is not a goal. (Generally, it's pointless -- the various engines work in different ways and offer different features. While there's a bunch of stuff that widely common, that's also the stuff you don't really need to abstract.)
The point of transpiling is to allow you to pick a syntax independent of the engine. You still have to pick the engine and will deal with its peculiarities.
Today's post is about pipe syntax, which is syntax. Yesterday's was about trailing commas, which is syntax. I think there's an appetite for this.
But I’m not sure I want to deal with a transpiler that still suffers from a leaky abstraction. It starts to feel a lot like using an ORM. ORMs promise database-agnostic syntax across different engines, but that promise falls apart when you need to optimize a query and suddenly realize you must account for engine-specific features—like PostgreSQL’s BRIN indexes.