[debug-desperado]

100% this. Whenever folks recommend simpler options like JDBI, I have to shake my head. Rolling your own query builder with string templates feels like an SQL injection attack waiting to happen. If you know 100% going into a project that you won't have to modify the structure of your queries based on user input, then it's an acceptable option. But it's quite common, at the very least, to have user input that results in variable number of terms in where clauses.

Hibernate is quite powerful and the tooling in IntelliJ (or Eclipse) catches many common mistakes at edit time. Where most folks get themselves into trouble is with all the caching setup. Not surprising, but if you want to just use Hibernate as a cache-less mapper there's always the StatelessSession interface.

I also don't get the oft-repeated notion that ORMs result in bad table design. You can map any tables you can dream up. And if you insist on doing inheritance, Hibernate has 4 different strategies for mapping to classes. Certainly one of those has the performance characteristics you're looking for.