I learnt SQL before learning any ORM but the Django ORM just 'fits my brain' better. Especially when you factor in the fact that it handles 90% of common cases

I learnt SQL before learning any ORM but the Django ORM just 'fits my brain' better. Especially when you factor in the fact that it handles 90% of common cases with a very simple syntax. In fact - due to lazy evaluation you can combine simple ORM queries and quite often you end up with subqueries behind the scenes. The Aggregate/Annotate syntax is a wonderful thing and I often find myself surprised writing queries that have some of that "Just Do What I Mean" magic. Admittedly I rarely have to deal with the need for highly performant database code. But one could argue that performance problems are often better handled via caching or denormalisation (which really boil down to the same thing) than by clever work on the db side.