ORMs not only help with the result of the query but but also when writing queries. When I wrote SQL I was constantly checking table names, columns, and enums. With a good ORM like EF Core not only you get autocomplete, type checking, etc but dealing with relationships is much less tedious than with SQL. You can read or insert deeply nested entities very easily.

Obviously ORMs and query builders won't solve 100% of your queries but they will solve probably +90% with much better DX.

For years I used to be in the SQL-only camp but my productivity has increased substantially since I tried EF for C# and Drizzle for TS.

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tracker1 3 days ago | parent [-]

VS Code plugs into my DB just fine for writing SQL queries...

With an ORM, you can also over-query deeply nested related entities very easy... worse, you can then shove a 100mb+ json payload to the web client to use a fraction of.

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mrsmrtss 3 days ago | parent [-]

That's just nonsense. It's trivial to make efficient projected queries with ORMs like EF. Nothing stops you doing stupid things with plain SQL either.

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tracker1 3 days ago | parent [-]

No, but it does put you closer to the actual database and makes you think about what you're actually writing. You also aren't adding unnecessary latency and overhead to every query.

	▲	pier25 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Better DX is not unnecessary. Also the overhead of good ORMs is pretty minimal and won't make a difference in the vast majority of cases. If you find a bottleneck you can always use SQL.