> I still don't get it, none of what you mention is impossible or even difficult in many ORMs
You may have not had to deal with cycles in data or other unusual views over the object graph that were not originally intended. Again, its not that you can't solve the problem using an ORM, its that its an opinionated way to solve a problem that constrains your design choices in such a way that you now have less fidelity at domain modeling time, which may result in yucky SQL down the road. ORMs effectively remove SQL capabilities from your tool belt. Yes - There are always hackarouds, but for most teams these "soft" limits are effectively hard ones and lead to bad career/product outcomes.
> using ORMs != being unskilled in SQL
Not necessarily, but I've personally never seen a developer go from writing CTEs in Dapper back to writing POCOs and using Entity Framework.
> I think we're hired to build products and solve problems, our egos should really get out of our way.
This is literally what the "stop using ORMs" crowd has been trying to sell as well. SQL has been the answer for half a century now. If you actually managed to kill your ego, you'd try to fit everything in that box as tightly as possible.
idk, this sounds a lot like don't use an IDE, use vim/notepad because IDEs can be opinionated. Maybe we've had different experiences, but I just think a lot of these arguments are unreasonably absolutist. Granted, some IDEs are terrible, but there's a sweet spot and many older IDEs have learned from it. I think ORMs have matured in this direction as well.
You may have not had to deal with cycles in data or other unusual views over the object graph that were not originally intended. Again, its not that you can't solve the problem using an ORM, its that its an opinionated way to solve a problem that constrains your design choices in such a way that you now have less fidelity at domain modeling time, which may result in yucky SQL down the road. ORMs effectively remove SQL capabilities from your tool belt. Yes - There are always hackarouds, but for most teams these "soft" limits are effectively hard ones and lead to bad career/product outcomes.
> using ORMs != being unskilled in SQL
Not necessarily, but I've personally never seen a developer go from writing CTEs in Dapper back to writing POCOs and using Entity Framework.
> I think we're hired to build products and solve problems, our egos should really get out of our way.
This is literally what the "stop using ORMs" crowd has been trying to sell as well. SQL has been the answer for half a century now. If you actually managed to kill your ego, you'd try to fit everything in that box as tightly as possible.