this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Programming

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I wish writing SQL queries was more popular than ORMs (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/programming
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Some backend libraries let you write SQL queries as they are and deliver them to the database. They still handle making the connection, pooling, etc.

ORMs introduce a different API for making SQL queries, with the aim to make it easier. But I find them always subpar to SQL, and often times they miss advanced features (and sometimes not even those advanced).

It also means every time I use a ORM, I have to learn this ORM's API.

SQL is already a high level language abstracting inner workings of the database. So I find the promise of ease of use not to beat SQL. And I don't like abstracting an already high level abstraction.

Alright, I admit, there are a few advantages:

  • if I don't know SQL and don't plan on learning it, it is easier to learn a ORM
  • if I want better out of the box syntax highlighting (as SQL queries may be interpreted as pure strings)
  • if I want to use structures similar to my programming language (classes, functions, etc).

But ultimately I find these benefits far outweighed by the benefits of pure sql.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to be an ORM-hater, but my experience with Django has changed my mind, somewhat. I still think there are projects where ORM is unnecessary or even harmful, but for some projects, being able to lean on an ORM to create simple queries/updates or to handle DB migrations is a big time saver. And you can always fall back to hand-written SQL when you need to as long as the ORM allows it, which it absolutely should.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Django's ORM is nice. Of all the ORMs I hate, I hate Django's the least.