I completely agree, but I think this was author's way of demonstrating how ugly a call to the ORM can get. With his very simple to-do list app I think this was

I completely agree, but I think this was author's way of demonstrating how ugly a call to the ORM can get. With his very simple to-do list app I think this was the easiest way for him to do that. In real life you would obviously have all your filter in one call (most of the time), then perhaps .values call with an .annotation call in there too.