This is incidentally where .Net was around the 1.1 release (2003ish) We had code generation frameworks kicking out swathes of boiler plate.

Now Repository<T> and for us around 200,000 lines of code are gone and only one narrow set of tests to execute.

I guess I don't see how generics would help you reduce the number of insert/update functions. The basic problem of an ORM is to map struct fields to columns; I don't see how generics would help you here. Can you write the generic pseudocode you want to write?

I would guess something like:

    class Collection<T implements Entity> {
        void insert(T entity) {
            String vals = entity.props.map(escapeSql).join(",");
            String qs = entity.props.map(x => "?").join(",");
            PreparedStatement p = db.prepare("insert into %s (%s) values (%s);", this.tableName, qs, vals);
            db.submit(p);
        }
    }

Go supports that today. Slice is a generic collection. Map will need to become for loops, but that's minor.

The idea that we don't need generics because we can generate code is kind of ridiculous, and certainly doesn't pass the simplicity smell test.

He wasn't making that argument...

Neither did I say he was. He was linking to a library that works around the lack of generics by generating code.