You say this in your post (and allude to it here), so not trying to be pedantic, but explicitly surfacing it here for other folks that don't click through: Ecto

You say this in your post (and allude to it here), so not trying to be pedantic, but explicitly surfacing it here for other folks that don't click through: Ecto isn't an ORM. I love Ecto. In my opinion, Phoenix has a lot of strengths, but Ecto is the superpower in that ecosystem. That being said, at least _some_ of the brand of "problems" mentioned in the post can exist into the Ecto world. I've seen plenty of folks new to Ecto fall into N+1 queries using `preload` naively, so I'd argue it doesn't completely erase that blurred boundary. I also personally much prefer the level that Ecto sits at and think the tradeoffs are totally worth it.