If you are developing a small-to-medium project, or if you are working with a big team of developers (more than three), using an ORM—in general—is a good idea. This is because firstly, it forces you to follow some rules, and secondly, the development will be much faster.
Let's take as an example the SELECT * FROM article query . Using a raw query, the MySQL log will return you this:
141214 23:35:53 572 Connect root@localhost on
572 Query select @@version_comment limit 1
572 Query SELECT DATABASE()
572 Init DB learning_phalcon
572 Query SELECT * FROM article
572 QuitBy using the ORM and the find() method, your MySQL log will look like the following:
141214 23:37:26 490 Query SELECT IF(COUNT(*)>0, 1 , 0) FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`TABLES` WHERE `TABLE_NAME`='article'
490 Query DESCRIBE `article`
490 Query SELECT `article`.`id`, `article`.`article_short_title`, `article`.`article_long_title`, `article`.`article_slug...