I can't think of an orm that can't handle joins. I can think of way that relatively inexperienced devs might use an orm in a day that doesn't take proper advan

I can't think of an orm that can't handle joins. I can think of way that relatively inexperienced devs might use an orm in a day that doesn't take proper advantage of it though (seen it). I don't see this as a reason to avoid an orm of course. In rails it's pretty trivial to load associations most of the time. There are also some queries that I think are best handled by find by sql oreven just raw sql. Sometimes this is performance othertimes it's for clarity. Overall if you use an form properly I think it can save time and improve clarity.