Am I alone in thinking SQL by itself is easier to understand and use than all indirection people like to stick on top of it?

You are not alone. I prefer handwritten SQL over abstractions like ORMs.

For cases where the query is truly static, I prefer to just write SQL.

Building SQL queries by concatenations strings, however, should get you arrested for negligence. If you need a query builder, then you need a query builder.

Sometimes you need a query builder but one is not available. Heck, last I checked, BigQuery didn’t even do string quoting for you.

Given it is hard to understand SQL once jt reaches 100-200 lines, anything that bloats it just pure evil :)

That airport example... not sure if trolling.

I find hilarious that they end writing what looks like an AST. In YAML. By hand.

As I continue exploring that site I'm becoming increasingly concerned that it might not be satire.

It's at least a great way to present it, way better than the single line string I usually see