About ORM-s… I agree SQL as a string (with prepared statements for example) is far from ideal solution also and I haven’t found anything either that would really fit well. It also depends of your other programming directions (like you mention, programming with objects only). But I do reject the view that I often get that ORM is a “given”, and looking/experimenting in other any directions is dumb and naive.

Frameworks is a wide term, and I did use “in most cases”.. sometimes they are usefull if not for else becasue of the bulk of code and knowledge that is already written, tested and somewhat fits together. Other times that bulk is too big or too general and you could get what you need with much much smaller core.

I favor minimalism greatly and I want to experiment with various ways of doing things. So if I am doing something for myself I usually like clean lower level core to build upon.

If I work for others I use whatever is best fit in global (also social) sense and I do for some time now propose clients to go with a web framework. Also for the reasons I wrote about here.