SQL rockets ahead of Pandas and Claude agents on interview‑style analytics tasks
A head‑to‑head test on three StrataScratch questions shows SQLite executing in milliseconds, Pandas in hundreds of milliseconds, and Claude Sonnet‑4‑6 taking seconds. While the AI agent matches SQL on simple queries, it lags on speed, adds hallucination risk, and isn’t production‑ready, highlighting where each tool shines.