I've been using Entity Framework for the last 5 years and have not encountered this issue, as long as I've got all my Includes specified correctly. There is al

I've been using Entity Framework for the last 5 years and have not encountered this issue, as long as I've got all my Includes specified correctly. There is also the AutoIncludeAttribute that you can specify on entity fields directly to always include those fields for every query. My main complaints with EF are that the scaffolding and migration commands for the CLI tool are nearly impossible to debug if they error during the run. But when they run right, they save me a ton of time in managing schema changes. Honestly, I consider that part worth all the rest. There can also be some difficulty getting queries right when there are cyclical references. Filtering "parent" entities based on "child" ones in a single query can also be difficult, and also can't be composed with Expression callbacks. But in any difficult case, I can always fall back on ADO.NET with a manual query (there are also ways of injecting manual query bits into EF queries). Which is what we'd be doing without EF, so I don't get the complaints about EF "getting in the way".