I'm fluent in SQL, and even with ActiveRecord it's not always possible to escape having to write it directly, but I still don't like it. Writing raw SQL comes

I'm fluent in SQL, and even with ActiveRecord it's not always possible to escape having to write it directly, but I still don't like it. Writing raw SQL comes with all kinds of risks you can abstract away through nice ORM APIs, and with a good ORM API I find that it's much easier to clearly communicate intent in the code. YMMV.