I've yet to see an ORM which doesn't just eventually make everything harder. Especially when it comes to automatic migrations, which seldom seem to take into account production necessities like multi-node deployment, downtime considerations and not destroying your production data silently because it doesn't fit.
Exact opposite experience.
“SQL strings are one of those things that make sense for really tiny projects but fail to scale once complexity settles in“
Large projects require reuse, composability and easy refactoring. All things ORMs excel at.
On a small code base it is easy to rename a column or add a column, etc.
On a large code base with already 100s of queries using that table, without an ORM it isn’t as straightforward to update all references and ensure that ever place consuming that table has the new column info.
> like multi-node deployment, downtime considerations
Never had an issue with Django on a large project at a previous $8b startup whose code base went over several major data refactors.
In fact Django’s excellent migrations was specially called out for the reason for our confidence in making large DB refactors.
ORMs are one of those things that make sense for really tiny projects but fail to scale once complexity settles in.