Excellent discussion of verbosity (many keywords), orthogonality (scalar vs record expressions, calling conversations) and semantics (bizarre equality for NULL) in database query languages, focusing on SQL: https://edgedb.com/blog/we-can-do-better-than-sql/
(Uses 'design by implementation' as derogatory!)
miniblog.
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I've been reading XEmacs source code today. It's amazing how much the C code resembes the GNU version (but with more derogatory comments).