*Admittedly for anything more than 1-2 joins you are better off hand crafting th...

Admittedly for anything more than 1-2 joins you are better off hand crafting the SQL. But that is the exception not the rule.

String disagree: if that’s true you likely don’t even need a proper RDBMS in the first place.

An ORM is not a replacement for knowing how SQL works, and it never will be.