I think ORMs like SQLAlchemy are really useful for many many use cases. I don't think most people who work with ORMs deal with the kind of complexity described

I think ORMs like SQLAlchemy are really useful for many many use cases. I don't think most people who work with ORMs deal with the kind of complexity described by the author, let alone work on such a specific application for 30 months at a time. In that sense, ORMs are super powerful tools that cut down your work, shortens your code and do nifty optimizations once in a while With that being said, this article totally resounds with me, having resorted to using direct SQL in almost all of my large-ish projects. Using an ORM always starts out nicely, and then eventually it gets messier and messier. Specifically, when your DB data has subtle interactions with a cache, I have found it harder to keep ORM code clean and readable.