I used to think ORMs were an anti-pattern too until I started realizing I was essentially implementing them every time I wrote any type of model that wrapped ar

I used to think ORMs were an anti-pattern too until I started realizing I was essentially implementing them every time I wrote any type of model that wrapped around SQL, as suggested in the "Use SQL in the Model" section. First we need some finders, OK--wrote those, and now we need a way to create some data... and then update it... maybe we'll combine those into a save method. Oops... looks like I just wrote an ORM. Except my ORM took me more time to write and is a lot less tested. I don't think of the benefits of an ORM being abstraction away from SQL or being more efficient. I think of them as code and tests written that I would of otherwise had to write myself.