[taylorlunt]

Yes, there is a middle ground. Elixir's Ecto does this well.

Database rows map to structs. But it doesn't try to figure out how to mutate the data for you to keep the struct in sync with the database. All mutations are explicit using changesets (which can also be used for other non-database purposes, like validating user input for an API.)

There is no implicit preloading of data. You have to explicitly preload.

Data is never fetched implicitly. You have to call Repo.all or Repo.one or something.

It has a query DSL that's a thin wrapper over SQL. It's well-designed and I've never had a problem with it.

[cultofmetatron]

> Yes, there is a middle ground. Elixir's Ecto does this well.

Ecto is by far the closest thing to a perfect pattern for abstracting over sql that I've ever seen. I WISH other languages would create similar libraries. Its the biggest thing keeping me coming back to elixir for any kind of database project. it just makes sql so ergonomic.

[sarchertech]

As someone who works with an 8 year old 500k LOC elixir codebase with millions of users, I hate Ecto so much. The thing I hate most is that there are 2 different syntaxes.

But a close second is that it encourages composition in situations where duplication is the right choice. Having your sql query spread across 7 files makes tracking down bugs and performance issues (and fixing them) incredibly difficult.

[to11mtm]

I mean FWIW Scala has Slick (but then you're dealing with the rest of Scala ecosystem...) and there's Linq2Db on .NET side. Having dealt with all 3 on some level (Slick the least) I would say they are fairly similar in intent (i.e. differences are primarily due to language idioms.)

[ezst]

I'm not sure Slick is still maintained. Recently I depended on https://github.com/com-lihaoyi/scalasql#simpletable-variant-... for small CRUD stuff and liked it quite a bit. These days there's a whole boulevard through the Scala ecosystem that doesn't involve typelevel pedantry and obscure DSLs just for the love of hieroglyphics.