"a bad workman always blames his tools" ORM's are just a tool, some better than others. Developers need to know SQL, relational algebra and normalization. Th

"a bad workman always blames his tools" ORM's are just a tool, some better than others. Developers need to know SQL, relational algebra and normalization. There is no excuse for not knowing proper databasing, ignoring the SQL generated by your ORM and blindly following along. A good ORM (like SQL Alchemy) will grow with you from the simplest of cases to the complex. Personally, I have never developed an application with an ORM and ignored the SQL generated. Most of the time the SQL generated by the ORM is acceptable but there are instances where the naive approach with an ORM generated piggish SQL and needed to be reworked.