Prela
Data
query language
SHOW HN2026
How HN took it
1 positive, 6 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 1 critical, out of 8 comments about the project. Thread score -0.07.
Docs: 0 for, 1 againstIdea: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Claude translated SQL into Prela easily and optimized queries to be fast via fine-grained plan control
From 1 comment
Claude had no problem translating SQL into Prela, and because you have fine grained control over the query plan (a Prela query is a plan), it was able to optimize queries to be…
remywang on HN
Explicit control over the query plan is appealing compared to SQL
From 1 comment
Having control over the execution plan is super interesting ! This is a very common frustration when writing SQL. Do you think it would be possible to offer Prela as a direct…
joelthelion on HN
No NULLs makes it has fewer pitfalls for humans and agents
From 1 comment
There are fewer foot guns in Prela in particular no NULLs which should help both humans and robots.
remywang on HN
Objections
Too many obscure symbols; not immediately readable
From 1 comment
> Prela queries are readable even to those new to the language Not really, too many obscure symbols. Certainly learnable but I wouldn't say immediately readable.
anentropic on HN
Hard to displace SQL, JS and Excel given their entrenched use
From 1 comment
SQL, JS, Excel are really hard to substitute because of how widely used they are by people. Even if something new comes up that it's objectively better, so far has always failed…
cpard on HN
Requests
Offer Prela as an interface to a relational database
From 1 comment
Having control over the execution plan is super interesting ! This is a very common frustration when writing SQL. Do you think it would be possible to offer Prela as a direct…
joelthelion on HN
Add a DuckDB data source backend
From 1 comment
It would be pretty easy to put a DuckDB data source into this code. It might be pretty easy to use overloading to get special case implementations that form SQL queries…
ted_dunning on HN
Questions
Whether agents perform better writing Prela than SQL
From 2 comments
SQL, JS, Excel are really hard to substitute because of how widely used they are by people. Even if something new comes up that it's objectively better, so far has always failed…
cpard on HNI'm more curious about going from text to Prela instead of going from text to SQL and measuring any difference in the performance there. On one hand models have been trained on a…
cpard on HN
Why the heading says Simple (SPJ)
From 1 comment
The heading saying "Simple (SPJ)" caught my eye, because I'm not sure SPJ has ever talked about simplicity in an especially referenceable way. Were you thinking of Rich Hickey's…
chowells on HN
Alternatives named
Morel, an ML dialect that compiles to Calcite
From 1 comment
Julian Hyde (Apache Calcite author) has a side project called Morel Morel is an ML dialect that can compile set-producing expressions into bytecode that Calcite can execute…
gavinray on HN
SQL
From 1 comment
SQL, JS, Excel are really hard to substitute because of how widely used they are by people. Even if something new comes up that it's objectively better, so far has always failed…
cpard on HN
DuckDB
From 1 comment
It would be pretty easy to put a DuckDB data source into this code. It might be pretty easy to use overloading to get special case implementations that form SQL queries…
ted_dunning on HN