the translation step from binary (program) -> text (SQL) -> binary (server)

Your concern about this is misguided. Inter-process communication always has to cross a barrier, by definition.

I take it http also feels wrong to you?

Binary protocols do exist, e.g. gRPC, but they incur costs of their own.

Shame I had to scroll this far to find PRQL

You want to have a superficial little rant about how much you hate microsoft. It’s uninformed and boring, and you’re not going to learn anything in that mindset.

C# is an excellent language for many circumstances. If you knock off the attitude, I’d be willing to explain to you why it’s so widely used.

Ugh, a Magic String (I call it that whatever the type)

FACILITY_MAX_PRESSURES = {
    "Durham": 1000,
    "Ipswich": 500,
    "Calne": 750,
}

max_pressure = list(sorted(
    FACILITY_MAX_PRESSURES.values()
))[-1]

if water_pressure > max_pressure:
    blah

Obviously it should really pull from facility management, but that’s a bunch of moving parts where a constant is how you’d prefer the code to work

Tbh it starts to look better to just define a constant and comment it.