99% of a CRUD app -- which is most of them -- is going to be simple CRUD stuff. Load a thing from database, let user edit it, save it. Doing that in 'plain' sql, even with templating, is repetitive and error prone.
An ORM that didn't let you escape to SQL when you wanted to do more complex things would be a total failure, of course -- but to suggest that they're not more convenient for the 80/20 or even 90/10 use case is just really hard to understand. Must be NIH syndrome.
