The hate should be directed at SQL builder part of most ORMs. Which gets complicated pretty quickly, and it's like learning a new language when SQL works usually much better.

If you write your SQL, and some tool, like code generation, then maps it to object, you are golden. It's the part you'd have to write anyway. However if the code generation goes bust (like gets abandoned like most hobby mappers), you should make sure you can take the code and continue like you never used the generator in the first place.

It looks like the authors suggestion SQLC is pretty close to that. It seems to generate a lot of code though, so it might be an issue if you don't want to maintain SQLC, test it out in here: https://play.sqlc.dev/