alt Hacker NewsYes, but in this context this just means that until you call ToList()/ToListAsync() you have an IQueryable. That represents a query, but isn't executed yet. Only at the point where you call a method like ToList (in this case First() is the relevant one) is the actual DB query performed.
The LINQ query in the comment above would only execute a single query like "SELECT name FROM users WHERE id = 123 LIMIT 1;" and would not even fetch the full entity, only the name.
Right, which was my point. They used Linq to get around the limitations of an ORM more-so than using an ORM itself (by fetching an entity and accessing its 'field'). They're evading the N+1 problem by writing a query by hand still, just not in SQL itself.
The bit about lazy loading was a bit of a side-note more than my main point.