can't stand orms and I wrote one myself a long time ago.

BUT

ecto isnt' an orm. its a sql dsl and it take a lot of pain out of writing your sql while being very easy to map what you're writing to teh output dsl

so instead of

``` select Users.id, count(posts.id) as posts_count from Users left join Posts on Posts.user_id = Users.id group by users.id ```

you can write ``` from(u in User) |> join(:left, [u], p in Post, on: u.id = p.user_id, as: :posts) |> select([u, posts: p], %{ id: u.ud, posts_count: count(p.id) }) |> group_by([u], u.id)

```

the |> you see here is a pipe operator. I've effectively decomposed the large block query into a series of function calls.

you can assign subqueries as separate values and join into those as well. it doesn't try to change sql. it just makes it vastly more ergonomic to write

That's pretty much identical to an ORM:

    db.Users
      .Inlude(u => Posts)
      .Select(u => new {
        u.Id,
        Count = u.Posts.Count()});