@til, I for one question why the business you’re working for has narrowed it down to only those two options and particularly why a Ruby on Rails style framework is apparently a definite requirement.
I remember some decades ago when the company I was working for at the time decided to migrate from ColdFusion to Ruby on Rails. While I recognized the benefits of scaffolding, MVC, and ORM, it also seemed I was the only member of the team who was more concerned about its many drawbacks.
At first I thought maybe I was just being a stick in the mud because they didn’t involve me in the decision and I’d never even heard of RoR, plus they relegated my role to solely DBA tasks with no app dev, thus my lack of RoR experience became a Catch-22. They barely even needed me at all since the scaffolding did so much for them … or so it seemed initially. Well actually I don’t know how it turned out for them long term because that’s when I decided to focus on my own entrepreneurship projects … and I’ve been a sole proprietor ever since. So yeah … thanks Ruby on Rails!!! 
With the benefit of hindsight I now realize I was more spot on than I knew back then. While scaffolding is highly effective for rapid prototyping, simple CRUD applications, and enforcing architectural consistency, its usefulness diminishes for more complex or performance-critical applications where greater customization and control are required. The value of scaffolding depends on the trade-off between development speed and long-term maintainability, and its questionable just how much the development speed benefit really is (see below).
From an SQL and DBA perspective, scaffolding and ORM introduce significant limitations in terms of query efficiency, schema design, and performance tuning. Those features tend to abstract away critical aspects of database optimization and control, leading to long-term performance and maintainability issues.
They often produce code that requires significant modification to meet real-world performance and design standards, effectively negating its initial speed advantage. My philosophy has been that if I’m going to have to tweak, fine tune, and refactor all of that scaffolded code eventually, might as well not scaffold at all and do it the right away from the start!
Furthermore, modern IDEs and AI-assisted tools (e.g. Windsurf) now provide intelligent autocompletion, boilerplate generation, and context-aware suggestions, reducing the need for scaffolding while allowing greater control over the codebase from the outset.
I’ve had a similar critical reaction to MVC, preferring to separate concerns manually with .cfm scripts (controllers) in the main web root folder, templates (views) in an include folder outside of the web root, and database queries in a folder of .cfc files (model) also outside of the web root.
The benefits of scaffolding and ORM are further negated by a proper Git deployment process that incorporates .sql scripted database changes. With a well-structured Git workflow, developers can track and manage code changes in version control, ensuring that every modification—whether to the application code or database schema—is transparent, repeatable, and easily reverted if necessary. Instead of relying on auto-generated migrations or scaffolded database structures, scripted SQL changes allow developers to have full control over database optimizations, indexing, and schema design.
By integrating version-controlled database scripts into the deployment process, the need for scaffolding is diminished, as database modifications are clear, explicit, and optimized for the specific needs of the application. Additionally, this approach ensures that all changes to the database are consistent across development, staging, and production environments, reducing the risks of discrepancies or poorly optimized auto-generated queries.
Ultimately, combining a disciplined Git workflow with manual, optimized database scripts not only removes the reliance on the framework, but also promotes better scalability, performance, and maintainability over time.
Well, I don’t expect anyone’s preferences to change based on what I’ve said here, nor am I likely to change based on any replies that might be forthcoming. 
I just wanted to share my own thoughts as obviously I have a very different perspective!
