&gt; are existing libraries really that bad?<p>I would say &#x27;no&#x27;. SQLAlchemy is very good, but extremely complex and powerful. I think people don&#x27;t understand that you can use the core features without any of the ORM overhead, if you don&#x27;t want it.<p>If you want to &quot;Just write SQL&quot; you can do that, easily: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.sqlalchemy.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;core&#x2F;tutorial.html#using-textual-sql" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.sqlalchemy.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;core&#x2F;tutorial.html#usin...</a>