[applejacks]

Sure, this is a simple example -- and you are right, if you are just writing a few selects, you may not find any value.

ORMs (or query-builders, as some like to draw a distinction there) become more valuable as you use them to compose and transform queries. SQL is decidedly not composable.

[10000truths]

You can compose SQL queries with subqueries.

My experience with ORMs is that they’re a minefield of performance cliffs. It’s easy to accidentally generate suboptimal SQL or introduce additional round trips unless you’re very careful about the code you write, at which point you might as well write SQL directly and be at the mercy of one less black box.

[applejacks]

If you compose SQL with subqueries you tend to do less composition in general (because you are restricted in what you can compose), and you are more at the mercy of the query planner, which is its own black box.

I'd rather simply understand how my ORM generates queries, and then use the ORM to get the full power of my language of choice in creating the right SQL queries.