[SheepSlapper]

Then you might not be in the target audience of Django. For the rest of us, the ORM is dope as hell and nobody cares that you aren't writing the most performant SQL the world has ever seen...

[rossant]

The ORM is fantastic and I never use raw SQL, but I can see how it may be simpler to just go straight to raw SQL with complicated database structures and queries.

[Maxion]

The best part about it though is that you can use raw SQL and the ORM at the same time. In larger projects that's how I've always used it. ORM for the majority of use cases, and the raw SQL where performance really matters.