A few weeks ago I woke up on a Saturday morning with a question notified on my Quora feed: Why do all the BI consultants hate DAX?
I was challenged to answering the question because I personally love DAX but I know enough people who had to fight with this language in order to obtain the desired result. So I spent my early morning trying to explain the reasons why DAX can generate feelings like love and hate!
Quick recap of the reasons for hating DAX:
- Simple syntax, hidden concepts.
- Functional and not procedural language.
- Hard to learn by examples.
In balance, my reasons for loving DAX:
- Conciseness and expressiveness.
- Speed (writing it right, I know).
The complete answer is much longer and detailed. I received many feedbacks on twitter and to be honest the reaction was overwhelming. I didn’t expect such interest, so I thought that also sharing the link on my blog could be useful. I would also like to get more elaborate feedback (twitter is too short sometimes) about reasons to love/hate DAX that I might have missed – feel free to write your comments!