If you don't use the power of modern relational databases, then all you do is CRUD and it feels really painful and kludgy because, without an ORM, it... well...

If you don't use the power of modern relational databases, then all you do is CRUD and it feels really painful and kludgy because, without an ORM, it... well... is painful and kludgy. Most dev's don't think about things like -- what happens if someone pulls the plug during a write? Or what happens if two people update the same record at the same time? They just see ugly INSERT/SELECT/DELETE text strings scattered throughout the code. I think most Ruby people are front-end and don't really have to deal with data (and there is nothing wrong with that). So I suggest that you ask a different audience? Ask people who (1) work server side and (2) deal with data. In other words, it is like asking a jazz musician why they like Mozart but not Beethoven. Not much information there.