This. At almost every level of web development, we're working with code that generates some other kind of code. Ruby -> C, Erb/Haml/whatever template => HTML, m

This. At almost every level of web development, we're working with code that generates some other kind of code. Ruby -> C, Erb/Haml/whatever template => HTML, maybe Coffeescript -> JavaScript, and finally ActiveRecord/any ORM -> SQL strings. I write Ruby all the time, I don't know a lick of C. I've got a solid understanding of SQL and relational data modeling, but why should I check the generated SQL of _every_ single query? Furthermore, if you don't use an ORM, your model's methods will contain a lot of similar functionality. Hmm, maybe I should write a module or base class so I don't repeat myself. Eventually you will have written an ORM.