valw

Or, you know, use a time-aware database like XTDB or Datomic.

I absolutely agree - one of the biggest shortcomings of SQL is that its primary programming interface is based on text and intended for human, instead of being based on data structures and intended for programs.

> There’s not much difference in expressiveness

> However SQL is declarative

Pick one :) the way I see it, if declarativeness is not a factor in assessing expressiveness, then expressiveness reduces to the uninteresting notion of Turing-equivalence.

Thanks for sharing this. I believe we essentially agree: chaining method calls is inexpressive compared to composing expressions in an algebraic language.

Btw, am I alone in thinking that DataFrame abstractions in OOP languages (like Pandas in Python) are oftentimes simply inferior to relational algebra? I'm not sure that many Data Scientists are aware of the expressive power of SQL.

Well, to be also fair, we also want quantum electronics to be deterministic in their behaviour. The difference lies not so much in randomness as in leveraging intrication.

> factoring prime numbers

factoring into prime numbers ;-) (factoring a prime number is trivial, that's why it's called prime)

> Are quantum computers overhyped?

Well, let's see:

> When given the same problem, a quantum computer should be able to trounce any supercomputer in any problem in terms of speed and efficiency

LOL, no, not any problem, far from it. Some problems, rather specific ones, such as prime factoring.

> Our current system, for example, taps into electrons and cleverly-designed chips to perform their functions. Quantum computers are similar, but they rely on alternative particle physics.

Um, no, they both rely on the same physics, that is a combination of Quantum Mechanics and electromagnetism. Note to the author: an electron is a quantum system, and classical electronics definitely rely on that.

So yes, quantum computers are overhyped, through no faults of their own, and this article contributes to the trend.

> the annual worldwide energy usage of blockchain technology is roughly equal to the annual US energy waste from machines plugged in while in standby mode. It is also significantly lower than the annual worldwide usage of Christmas lights, and wash dryers.

... and it benefits much, much fewer people.

That's analogous to the pro-air-travel disinformation argument: "air travel is only 2% of CO2 emissions". It is only so because air travel is only adopted by a small minority of people: that doesn't stop it from being insanely carbon-intensive.

April fool's joke : we'll pretend that bugs in software are distributed as a homogeneous Poisson process, AND that Poisson distributions are bounded, while we're at it.

Poisson d'avril!