Form-driven Editors and Language as Cognitive Artifacts

I was recently noodling in an Access database, creating queries. By default the "New Query" dialog steers users to a form-driven editor. It takes a couple of clicks to get to a text editor for writing SQL.

When writing SQL, at least, I'd much prefer the text editor by default. The reason is that the form editor slows me down at a very fundamental level. It's not as if I'm a coder with a chip on my shoulder about graphical code generators. Far from it. I can think of at least two that are quite handy at what they do [1, 2]. But with a language like SQL it's always going to be easier to learn how to speak the language than learn how to use a proprietary GUI. Even if Access was the only database technology I ever used (which is not the case), I know intrinsically that SQL is the right way to query a database and a form editor is the wrong way to query a database. The reason is that the act of querying a database is, at its core, an act of language expression. Filling in a form and dragging boxes around are acts of interaction that get in the way of expression...of me telling the computer what I want it to do.

This must be the inherent lesson from Donald Norman's theories on cognitive artifacts. It's interesting that I found this article by him just now. It says:

"And of all the artifacts that have aided cognition, the most important is the development of writing, or more properly, of notational systems: number systems, writing, calendars, notational systems for mathematics, engineering, music and dance."