HACKER Q&A
📣 htunnicliff

Who writes plain SQL in production?


Does anyone write “plain” SQL queries in production web apps, as opposed to using an ORM? I ask because I’ve only ever worked at companies using ORMs, but feel like there is a lot of simplicity in being able to write SQL directly.


  👤 arcbyte Accepted Answer ✓
The only people I encounter using ORMs are junior devs or folks who who keep moving project to project before they get a chance to support something in production. The first time you get an issue and go "wtf" at an ORM you switch real fast.

👤 johnny99k
Every ORM I've encountered always has issues when you want to write custom SQL outside of the ORM. It turns into a real mess real fast.

Our production code is mostly stored procedures called by code.


👤 brookritz
I always do. In a recent project with just me and another developer they added a senior/lead/architect who took over and ordered to rewrite using "enterprise" stuff including ORM. I left. Now they have more developers and code that is about shoveling data back and forth to and between layers, beans, controllers, services, adapters ...

👤 ttymck
Isn't the ORM the mapper from rows to objects? Every ORM I've used has support for "plain sql", in addition to a query builder/dsl.

How are you deserializing query results and serializing inputs?

For context: I work on web apps


👤 stray
Yes. I rarely use an ORM.

👤 gregjor
yes, at several jobs. never use an ORM if i can help it.

👤 jeffogbu25
I rarely use ORM