For me, ORMs and [web] frameworks serve essentially the same purpose - Establishing some development pattern that can be followed.<p>Most developers do not feel comfortable jumping directly into raw sql/js/html/css when they are just starting out in their careers, especially when trying to build a new/complex thing. Having effectively zero constraints on how to structure a real-world codebase can be terrifying if you don't have an existing mental model of one of these things. I remember what it was like to be staring into the maw of a blank solution explorer and not even knowing how many projects I would need to create or what a good namespace system might look like.<p>Understanding that the sql schema is probably the most important part of the entire product may encourage us to not sweep this particular concern under the rug of automagic training wheels. We did the entity framework thing for about a year before moving back to raw sql. Performance was the biggest thing for us. Many of the inferences the ORM made back then were horrific in practice.