To be clear this is something I’ve thought a bit about. I think the interesting analog is not maps per se, but relational tuples. Instead of “everything is a list”, it would be “everything is a tuple”, and the environment is a table. Evaluate a tuple to execute, evaluate a table to execute in parallel.
Objectively speaking table oriented programming is a very interesting topic. Sadly the incredibly effective anti-evangelist calling himself topmind over at the c2 wiki convinced me to completely ignore it for over a decade.
The relational calculus is an incredibly powerful formalism though, and it's definitely one that has an important place in serious software development.
