The ORM space is actually getting much closer. Both TypeORM and Objection.js are good options. But if you're talking about Django as whole then I totally agree.

I’ve considered them before along with Sequelize but their repos are chock-full of issues, and I’ve read some very negative opinions about all of them. They make me unsure that they’re production-worthy.

This is it. If you can’t connect to your database effectively and safety execute queries + migrations (looking at you people who write SQL queries by hand in Typescript) you’re just writing something that is one key stroke away from destroying your database.

> you’re just writing something that is one key stroke away from destroying your database.

Is it any more difficult to destroy your database in Django DSL than it is in raw SQL? We're using a lot of raw SQL at day job, and the two junior developers on our team who had no priory experience of working with SQL databases at all have picked it up just fine.

It just seems kind of like building a car by hand to me. Why would you want to use raw SQL when you can leverage the power of your favorite programming language? Isn't it cleaner to write a Model with Pythonic field constraints, methods, and subclassing? Don't get me wrong - knowing SQL is important for every developer, but one doesn't need to be an SQL expert to be a back-end development expert.