That's a good question. I don't use an ORM, but you do, so that tells us that 50% of developers use an ORM ;-)
Does anyone have any stats on what percentage of developers use an ORM?
Does anyone have any stats on what percentage of developers use an ORM?
To me, an ORM is a tool that allows someone that knows SQL to write statements they would write by hand using business-level vocabulary.
Also, you have to be savvy enough to know when you are hitting the max expressiveness of the ORM and need some powerful SQL you better write by hand. Active Record certainly provides API for that, and it is an API you are supposed to leverage when the circumstance arises (Rails team over here).