title: ORM or SQL in large, scalable and MAINTAINABLE web application?
body: <p>I know there already are a lot of posts floating on the web regarding this topic.</p>
  
  <p>However, many people tend to focus on different things when talking about it. My main goal is to create a scalable web application that is easy to maintain. Speed to develop and maintain is far more appreciated BY ME than raw performance (or i could have used Java instead).</p>
  
  <p>This is because i have noticed that when a project grows in code size, you must have maintainable code. When I first wrote my application in the procedural way, and without any framework it became a nightmare only after 1 month. I was totally lost in the jungle of spaghetti code lines. I didn't have any structure at all, even though i fought so badly to implement one.</p>
  
  <p>Then I realized that I have to have structure and code the right way. I started to use CodeIgniter. That really gave me structure and maintainable code. A lot of users say that frameworks are slowing things down, but I think they missed the picture. The code must be maintainable and easy to understand.</p>
  
  <p>Framework + OOP + MVC made my web application so structured so that adding features was not a problem anymore.</p>
  
  <p>When i create a model, I tend to think that it is representing a data object. Maybe a form or even a table/database. So I thought about ORM (doctrine). Maybe this would be yet another great implementation into my web application giving it more structure so I could focus on the features and not repeating myself.</p>
  
  <p>However, I have never used any ORM before and I have only learned the basics of it, why it's good to use and so on.</p>
  
  <p>So now Im asking all of you guys that just like me are striving for maintainable code and know how important that is, is ORM (doctrine) a must have for maintainable code just like framework+mvc+oop?</p>
  
  <p>I want more life experience advices than "raw sql is faster" advices, cause if i would only care about raw performance, i should have dropped framework+mvc+oop in the first place and kept living in a coding nightmare.</p>
  
  <p>It feels like it fits so good into a MVC framework where the models are the tables.</p>
  
  <p>Right now i've got like 150 sql queries in one file doing easy things like getting a entry by id, getting entry by name, getting entry by email, getting entry by X and so on. i thought that ORM could reduce these lines, or else im pretty sure that this will grow to 1000 sql lines in the future. And if i change in one column, i have to change all of them! what a nightmare again just thinking about it. And maybe this could also give me nice models that fits to the MVC pattern.</p>
  
  <p>Is ORM the right way to go for structure and maintainable code?</p>