So you mean I'm writing code like this, in a language somewhat like Typescript but simplified to my end.

   function update(id: ID_TYPE, value: Partial<sometable>) {
      const set_clause = value.keys.map(k => k + " = ?").join(", ")
      const params = value.values.concat([id])

      db.query("UPDATE sometable SET " + set_clause + " WHERE = ?", params)
   }

How is code not terrible? It shouldn't pass code review. Once you concatenate strings to generate your sql, all bets are off. There will be a day when your object doesn't match your assumptions. Either you have a series of different functions, each of which will change under different circumstances; or you should just be generating this function like this directly from the schema in which case you might as well just generate code you want at build time so there's string concatenations anywhere.

Is there some other circumstance when you want that?