It has this cute macro-based syntax, and that seems to inform even the "functional" API as well. Yet when you I wanted to do something just a bit more advanced like joining on an association whose name I don't know in advance (or, say, want to parameterize the function with), I had to resort to writing a macro myself and then eval-ing it an runtime.
Well, take the numerous articles extolling the virtues of Sequel, or DataMapper, or, related to the current discussion, Ecto itself. Like how expressive this stuff is. And how ActiveRecord creates a too huge API surface on models, and that that leads to bad design, etcetera. Now to mention the callbacks, which are admittedly problematic.
But then I try those aforementioned libs and see sharp corners like terrible argument validations (in case of Sequel) which lead to silently failing code, or actual hard limitations on what I can ask Ecto to do without resorting to meta-programming.
> I also haven't ever found a good replacement for AR migrations
IME, both Sequel and Ecto migrations are fairly serviceable. But neither provides the schema dumping feature that AR has. Which is pretty handy.
Imo this is actually much better than an orm because it really hits home that the data in memory are stale as soon as you receive them because database transactions are explicit, and not hidden behind getters and setters.
ORMs can get you into trouble because they try really hard to hide the problem of distributed state and sources of truth.