I've seen so much torturously complex code to coerce an ORM or query builder to generate a query that would've been simple just to write. Because "that's the way it's done" - Spend 5 minutes writing a query and then 5+ hours trying to figure out the convoluted code necessary to coerce something to generate that same query.

Of course, there are times when query builders are necessary to create the queries dynamically depending on parameters. But it's all too common to see them used and abused even for static queries.

People are just plain afraid of writing SQL. Or they think it's 'best practice' to use an ORM or query builder and using actual SQL is somehow 'wrong'.

Even people who know a decent amount about the database do it anyway because "that's the way that it's supposed to be done" or "that's 'best practice'".