I feel like there should be a distinction between full-blown ORMs and just query builders.
I dislike ORMs that hide database operations from the application code by pretending that in-memory application objects are in concept interchangeable with persistable objects; though just saying that hurts a bit because I don't want to think in terms of objects, but in data.
Query builders are fine if they allow you to build efficient queries in a type-safe and composable manner to get data in and out of the database in the form your application requires at the site of the database query, but I don't want to be forced to pretend I fetch "User" objects if all I really need from the database are the name and e-mail.
I dislike ORMs that hide database operations from the application code by pretending that in-memory application objects are in concept interchangeable with persistable objects; though just saying that hurts a bit because I don't want to think in terms of objects, but in data.
Query builders are fine if they allow you to build efficient queries in a type-safe and composable manner to get data in and out of the database in the form your application requires at the site of the database query, but I don't want to be forced to pretend I fetch "User" objects if all I really need from the database are the name and e-mail.