Even at a cursory glance some of the things they suggest as the solution like being "migration first" is exactly in alignment with ActiveRecord, which has always been migration first. Even the | based syntax they post functions similarly to AR . chaining. This person is clearly writing from a problems with python's ORM perspective.
I am very happy with AR, I have spent a lot of time in data engineering as well and I find raw SQL perfectly fine and expressive for reporting, and data query though I understand why many don't get or like it, etc.
ORM's really shouldn't be used outside OO app dev but for application mapping AR is great and I'm incredibly happy with it's ergonomics and dev friendliness, quite frankly for SQL naive app devs I would much rather they use it because it tends to optimize SQL queries better than your typical app dev with lower-mid tier sql experience. SQL is basically a functional language (saying that ticks a lot of people off but it's true) though which is why many devs hate it as it requires you think functionally.
The only thing I think is an actual improvement recently in the space in terms of writing queries is what DuckDB has done.