Re: COBOL
"And what happened to COBOL? Far from being an enabler which rid the world of computer geeks, it simply created a new one - COBOL programmers."
SQL was designed with a similar mindset - ie people being able to "talk" to their computer in something resembling english (of course they never said what would happen if they were , say french and couldn't speak it). Which is fine for 5 minutes. But as soon as any complex logic is required then someone who understands complex logic and how to implement it is required on the scene. There's a name for these people - they're called programmers.