I don't deny that it's more work. The question is whether it's worth the investment. I think for large, complex codebases (not little one-off apps) the gains in

I don't deny that it's more work. The question is whether it's worth the investment. I think for large, complex codebases (not little one-off apps) the gains in performance and long-term maintainability are worth it. Having the ability to know the exact performance implications of a query (and not having to waste brain cycles on questions about lazy vs eager loading, etc) is more desirable.