Ask HN: Who writes plain SQL in production?

5 points·htunnicliff··7 comments

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.

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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.

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.

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 ...

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

Yes. I rarely use an ORM.

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

I rarely use ORM

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