Comment by dotancohen

  > Isn’t it more important that the query you write with the ORM is readable than the underlying SQL it spits out?

I would look at the issue from a slightly different angle. Performance issues aside, I personally prefer either the ORM or the SQL depending on which is easier for the guy maintaining it to understand. Getting a row from the database and transforming it into an object? ORM. Generating a report on historical data across half a dozen tables? SQL.