IMO having some ORM automagically construct queries for you is a pretty scary idea. Obviously it's not a good idea to have SQL scattered all over your codebase

IMO having some ORM automagically construct queries for you is a pretty scary idea. Obviously it's not a good idea to have SQL scattered all over your codebase (we've all seen it). But including SQL in your code isn't hard if you keep it in one place and abstract it properly.